Star Trek: Pioneer
by Draft
Summary: What if a ship were sent to rescue Voyager? What if the rescuers were never meant to come home? Please read and review.
1. Follow the Lost Cause

**Star Trek: Pioneer**

_Stardate: 2374.0112.0917._

_We have reached the great barrier at the core of the Milky Way. Seven years of planning and decades of research have brought us here after a journey of six years, and two days. In that time we have crossed 19,000 light years and contacted two new species along the way. Personally, I confess it's been a rather uneventful trip so far. Considering the time and distance involved I expected a few more first contacts, but the closer we get to the Barrier, the harder inhabited worlds are to find. So far as we can tell from our search, a no-man's-land of 2,100 light years extends all the way around the Galactic Core, but I might add that we have only explored a small sector of that area. My previous logs will indicate the intricacies of the areas we scanned, but I can summarize them all from Stardate 2369.1203.1205 onward as being bereft of new life. In a way I find this comforting. If trouble lurks beyond the Barrier, as the logs of James Kirk indicate, we may have a ways to go before we meet up with them. My engineering staff is having fits keeping the warp field steady, and everyone has commented on the stark difference between our trip and Kirk's. To put it mildly, the Enterprise made it through this sector of space with astonishing ease. The Pioneer has had nothing but trouble for the last three years. The massive gravity of the core keeps distorting and stretching sub-space so badly that we have to drop out of warp every few hours to map out a path through a maze of pitfalls in minute detail. Theories abound as to why this is so, but so far it has delayed us sixty months. The crew and I are anxious to proceed._

The short man with the broad shoulders scrutinized his command display with intense interest. "Engineering," he called out, "do we have the power to proceed?"

Chief engineer Edmund Gordon hesitated before he answered. "Everything I see tells me we can, but with all the trouble we've experience in no-man's-land I'm not sure."

Commander Samantha Okuma was impatient with the answer. "Just give us your recommendation, Chief," she snapped. Her brown eyes boiled with enthusiasm, and she shifted restlessly in her seat.

"Commander!" Captain Peyter Koon warned. He turned back to his command display. Absently he murmured, "We have enough to do without jumping Eddie's case." He looked again at the main viewer before he spoke again. Indicating what was in front of them he said, "That's what we come for."

The main viewer showed a swirling mass of blue-white light that constituted the Great Barrier. Until about one hundred years ago, no one had ever suspected it manifested itself in this way. Hidden behind a massive dust cloud so thick light failed to backlight it from beyond the barrier, the Great Barrier was a massive source of energy caused by slow fusion of a thin layer of dust. Pressure from the gravity mass of the outer Milky Way met up with the conflicting pressure from the core. In essence this was the border between the Galaxy's need to expand under the explosive inertia from its formation, and the crushing force of its own gravity. These two forces were not perfectly balanced, and the Barrier swirled, churned, and bucked as a result.

"Makes solar flares look like a picnic," commented Lieutenant Darin Forte from his post at the helm. A huge gout of wispy blue-white dust jumped above the turmoil half a light-year wide and millions of kilometers high to punctuate his point. Another, larger one stretched above it all the way across the visible horizon. Sensors indicated it spanned a distance greater than _Pioneer's_ ability to detect.

"Captain, I think I may have something," Lieutenant Kree said.

Koon turned to face the Navigation officer, "Yes what is it?"

Kree rubbed her hands through her white hair and changed the main viewer to a tactical star map. The map showed their position near the Barrier and the path they had taken to it. "I was mapping out the path of those flares and I found they radiate from the barrier in all directions we can detect, but," she keyed another sequence and the image shifted to a three dimensional view, "look at what they do as they move into no-man's-land." The flares path began to twist and the material began to flatten. "The Saturn Effect," she announced. She described a theory they were sent out to investigate. The Saturn Effect detailed in physics the tendency of debris to gather about an "equatorial" disc no matter where it had originally come from. All accretion which led to the formation of celestial bodies depended on it. Meaning that, in this case, dust thrown up from a polar position would tend to migrate down towards the main disk of the Milky Way instead of traveling out towards the Galactic Halo. It had been dubbed the "Saturn Effect" since the planet Saturn most visibly demonstrated the general shape the mechanics implied even though the planet itself showed only a weak version of the process. Scaled up, the process started with planets and their satellites, continued with star systems (although there were a few exceptions), and ultimately ended with galaxies. While the process was never really in doubt, a contrary theory existed that stated on this massive a scale, debris would begin to migrate back into the core when inertia was lost as the dust began to shift away from its original course. One of the _Pioneer's_ mission goals detailed an investigation into this.

Captain Koon had to smile. This Andorian by taking the initiative to map out paths of the flares had just achieved a major objective of their mission. "Dr. Totem will be pleased," he said.

"And Dr. Spaulding will be furious," Commander Okuma added. A series of chuckles, snorts, and giggles erupted from the crew. Dr. Cole Spaulding had offered no fewer than five detailed theories against the Saturn Effect, all of which had just been laid to rest. But that was fine, the man openly admitted they had been developed purely as alternatives to what they expected to find. Furthermore the man was famous for short, intense fits of rage that resembled the Three Stooges, whom he admired. No one ever escaped him without setting him off into a stumbling, bumbling fit of temper, but no one ever managed to be offended by it.

Dr. Krheftotemrhefkef, or more simply Dr. Totem, was the lead scientist aboard. He had designed the mission profile and much of the specialized equipment involved. The path they took, the experiments they made, and the profile mission objectives revolved around Dr. Krhefto… Totem. And as of about twenty months ago, he had not been a bit pleased. His displeasure centered on the ship's meandering path they had been forced to take as soon as they entered the area everyone had since dubbed "no-man's-land."

The original course matched, as precisely as they could, Kirk's original to the Great Barrier, but the rout was littered with cosmic pitfalls that collapsed warp fields. Chief Gordon had taken to calling them potholes. It made traveling through the area like riding a hoarse at full gallop across the plains at night; sooner or later that hoarse was going to step into a gofer hole and break its leg. Fortunately, nothing catastrophic had befallen _U.S.S. Pioneer_, but repairs were frequent and the stops lengthy to accommodate them. Chief Gordon was getting good at system overhauls.

Kree continued, "I think I can explain why we had such a hard time getting here also."

All heads turned with some degree of interest. Their trip had been so troublesome, so laborious, and so delayed that not a soul aboard could be unaffected by news of this nature. "Go on," Koon urged.

Kree tapped out a few keys and the flares and lights began to speed up and shrink back towards the core. "Magnetic and gravitic distortions follow the flares at roughly the same pace. If we overlay our course with what the time model shows in relation to these flares…" she stopped as the picture told the story. On the main viewer a line, symbolizing their path remained stationary while the bands of distortions drifted past until it stopped revealing a clear, narrow corridor. The time reference indicated the precise time _Enterprise _passed through.

"Good God," Okuma said, "how long was that path clear?"

Kree shook her head, "No more than two months before the path began to curve. What we didn't count on was the swirling eddies of the material. We predicted the general drift, but not the coreolis effect brought on by the galactic core's rotation."

"Why didn't we find this out sooner?" Okuma demanded.

"Because we didn't have any source data on the flares before we got here. The _Enterprise_ only studied the barrier and where they breached it in any detail," Science Officer Lieutenant Commander Willie Hurst explained. "_Kompt!"_ he added as he smashed a fist onto his console. "With this kind of data at our disposal, we could have shortened the trip by…" he trailed off as he mentally calculated distances and delays, "…two years."

"Kirk expected another mission to be sent out here to investigate what they found," Okuma said.

"But they never did," Koon said. "It doesn't matter. We've covered a lot of useful ground by coming this way. Lieutenant Kree, can you plot a safer course out of here? Or do we have to do the whole mess over again?"

Kree smiled, "Oh, almost certainly."

"Good," Koon said. "We may want to avoid the scenic rout when we leave."

"Sir," Lieutenant Tania Shin said, "incoming message from Starfleet."

"Do we need to move any time soon?" Koon asked sincerely hoping they had to move right away.

Lieutenant Commander Hurst shook his head, "I see no need to rush things. The density of the barrier is only getting thicker everywhere I can detect."

Koon heaved a great sigh. "Alright then, I'll take it in my ready room." He stood up and walked towards the door. "Commander, you have the bridge," he said over his shoulder.

Communication with Starfleet was getting slow to say the least. Even with subspace transmission, the delay approached six months now. In the interest of clarity, Admiral Forrestal had dictated that all further reports be relayed, letter fashion, to the nearest Starfleet outpost only, rather than broadcast in a broader range. Recently, though Forrestal was being quite aggravating. He redirected the course, ordered the _Pioneer_ to investigate mundane phenomena, countermanded mission objectives, and then demanded they do all this within the original timetable. Koon wanted to throttle the man, but it would seem that Starfleet bureaucracy was to blame. Koon called it the "good idea" syndrome. In theory anyone with a good idea could walk into Forrestal's office and ask to see what could be done about it. Since Koon was the only one out this particular way, it was natural that any and all requests having to do with the galactic core, Scrutum Arm, Norma Arm, or 3 KPC Arm naturally drifted his way. But enough was enough. He'd been out here seven years already, and no thought had been given to turning around yet. With the core yet to be breached, the mission had barely begun.

Koon sat down and saw the typical Starfleet emblem. When he keyed the sequence, the image disappeared to reveal Admiral Forrestal. The Admiral was a thin patrician of a man. His regal mane of silver hair framed a face beset with a Roman nose and a cleft chin. Gazing across the light years with deep blue eyes that no longer seemed to meet Koon's grey eyes the Admiral's image made the distant Captain cringe. The look on Forrestal's face told Peyter that he wasn't going to like what the man had to say.

"Hello, Peyter," the Admiral began. It was not a good sign. Forrestal always acted cordial if a good idea or some other mischief came his way. "I'm calling to tell you of the reception of your last report and my entire satisfaction with your findings."

Koon rubbed his temple which began to throb. The last report contained an eye-watering, in depth inquiry into a quasar fifteen light years off his projected flight path and little else. While Koon had signed on for this kind of work, he nonetheless bit back his anger. The report had been filed eight months ago. If Forrestal had only just gotten to it this week, then all kinds of issues crystallized in his mind. They really were about as far from home as they could be and still get the bad news.

"But I'm sure you're busy enough without me congratulating you on some good science," Forrestal continued with a warm smile.

"No kidding," Koon muttered.

"We have some news regarding one of our ships. U.S.S _Voyager_ has been found," the Admiral announced. His face beamed to indicate that it was good news after all.

Koon's headache vanished. Relief was not an adequate word to describe what he felt right now. He had friends aboard _Voyager_ even though it had launched years after _Pioneer_. Janeway was a personal friend, as was the chief engineer. To hear they might be safe was a load off his mind. And to further imagine the Admiral's call as nothing more than delivering some good news was a further relief.

"She's in the Delta Quadrant," Forrestal elaborated. "Apparently they were transported to the far end of the Galaxy by some kind of entity know as the Caretaker. Sadly, a few of her crew died, but she's been making her way back to the Alpha Quadrant ever since her disappearance."

Koon nodded thinking about others aboard the ship he might know. He thrummed the desk with his fingers as he thought. Was there someone else? A science officer? A security officer? Then it dawned on him. There was a science officer aboard _Voyager_ he had turned down. Everyone aboard _Pioneer_ had to be completely comfortable with an extended mission, even by Starfleet standards. The mission had been planned with delays and extended travel time in mind; consequently, all the scientists, crewman, and personnel had to be prepared for a ten year mission at least. Someone he turned away for this reason later managed a slot aboard _Voyager_.

"We want you to go meet her," Forrestal said.

Captain Koon's thrumming fingers froze on the desktop.

Star charts replaced the Admiral's image as he continued. He explained the rout _Voyager _was taking and the projected path he expected Captain Koon to take his people. If all went well, _Pioneer_ should meet up with _Voyager_ in nineteen years. Lists of stores and supplies covered by the present mission scrolled across the screen while Forrestal explained what Koon was going to have to do to extend the mission. By Starfleet's estimate, _Pioneer_ could easily manage the trip. In addition other ships would be sent out their way as time went on to act as relay stations to help out with supplies and aid in communication.

"Sadly," Forrestal told Koon, "the core mission has to be scrapped. By the data you've provided and the urgency of the current dilemma, no other ship is anywhere near a place to aid _Voyager_ except you. Also our people tell me that it's too dangerous to breach the barrier. While you may make it inside the core, we can't guarantee you'll ever manage to make it out again."

"We already knew that before I left!" Koon exploded.

"I know this is a huge disappointment, Peyter, but 140 of our people are at stake," the message reasoned.

"So you'll risk 815 of mine!" Koon bellowed. His migraine bloomed again in full force.

The message ended with the usual formalities and Admiral Forrestal mercifully vanished from sight.

For a long, breathless moment Peyter Koon could barely gather his thoughts. _Nineteen years!_ His mind fairly blasted the thought out of his head. And that did not cover the distance home either. Even at maximum, sustained warp (about warp 8.5) it would take another twenty-three years to make it home. He would be in his eighties before he saw Russia again. None of the crew would be much younger than their sixties. Just what did they expect him to do, _breed_ another crew? They had all taken an extended leave from their lives at home in the first place to come along, but he doubted any of them expected to live out the remainder of their lives aboard the _Pioneer_.

He stabbed the intercom button. "Commander, I need you in here please," his voice was calm and quiet. He was surprised he could manage anything short of shouted profanities.

A moment later, Commander Okuma marched into the room. He motioned for her to be seated, and without a word played back the entire message. For a long time after Forrestal concluded, Okuma stared at the screen on Koon's desk. Without a word she leaned forward and called up the ship's inventory occasionally flicking the data between star charts, Starfleet's estimates, and similar data pertaining to _Voyager_. After a long, long look at the collected data she announced: "We can make it."

Koon studied the view out his window. Outside a magnificent panorama of the Great Barrier spanned half his vision while wispy arms of ionized dust and gas drifted into the Milky Way beyond. With a thin, distant voice he said, "I know we can make it."

Commander Okuma leaned back in her chair. Shock began to ease away from her, and her form began to slump as though the soul within had just dragged a great burden a long way. "Should we do it, Pete?" she asked reverting to the title she called him as a friend. A decision of this magnitude could not be reached on the strength of their official duties.

"I don't see how we can't, Sam," Peyter replied.

"A forty year mission on the outside, more if problems arise, and people with families at home they might never see again," Samantha reasoned, "I think we can refuse on that basis. We weren't meant to be gone half that long."

"I don't see it that way," Peyter told her.

"Our design specifications only allow for twenty years of hard use before a complete overhaul," she warned.

Koon regarded the Barrier one last time before he tuned back to face her. A sad resolve transformed his usually plain features into a striking image Samantha Okuma found utterly compelling. "_Voyager _has about seventy years ahead of them. Anything less we have little right to bitch about."

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"We can trim some time," Chief Gordon said as soon as he heard the news.

The announcement had the expected effect on the crew: a moment of total shock. Samantha and Peyter had agreed that the message should be played back for the crew so they might all know the magnitude of the task ahead. Samantha had been uneasy about the prospect and Koon himself guessed it a gamble at best, but presenting it to them in such a fashion offered the best chance to unite the crew behind them. To their combined relief, no one suggested refusing. Indeed, the crew rallied so enthusiastically, Samantha was overwhelmed for a moment with messages from the various section leaders on down.

To a man, the frustration of exploring the core for esoteric, intellectual reasons paled in comparison to what amounted to a rescue mission. People could grasp the reality of a comrade in need far easier than the loftiest discovery. Koon's heart swelled as he watched the discouraged, listless faces of his crew vanish in energy and purpose. In an instant he traded a bright crew for a brilliant one just by presenting the problem before them all. He couldn't be prouder.

Samantha didn't waste the time admiring the transformation. Instead she delighted in the bounty it produced. "Just what do you mean, Chief?"

"What if we cut across the core?" Gordon suggested. "We find a nearby spot to…" he trailed off mentally searching for the word, "ford across the Great Barrier. We cut across the core instead of flying around it, and find another place on the other side along our direct flight path."

"We can trim years off our travel time there and back," Lieutenant Kree agreed.

Even Dr. Spaulding and Dr. Totem agreed it was worth a try. "The curvature of space time in there could shorten the trip six months to five years at least," Dr. Totem assured them rubbing his scaly jaw in concentration.

"I think we can find a way to breach the Barrier right here if necessary," Dr. Spaulding added.

During the next few hours, _Pioneer_ took on a life of its own almost independent of Peyter's ability to control. The entire navigation team, plus the science teams, and engineering worked non-stop in an effort to plot possible courses, pitfalls, strategies for maintaining speed, and so on.

After a full day, the complete science crew, plus most of Engineering stood in Captain Koon's ready room with a plan. "We're in luck," Gordon told him. "If we were in a _Galaxy_-class ship this would be far trickier. But _Nebula_-class allows a certain flexibility the larger class doesn't." He turned to the display on the wall where his presentation began to take shape. "As you know, the _Pioneer_ is far more compressed in dimetions than any other class. We tuck our warp nacelles under us instead of behind the main mass of the ship, and as a result we have to run on a different set of warp field geometry than the conventional layout. Usually we run a smaller field below and behind us, but if we bring the field around us in a tight pattern we might be able to breach the Barrier at will."

"How?" Koon asked.

Dr. Totem explained, "We've been studying the behavior of those flares, and we believe we can use them to draw us through the barrier without looking for points of low density. We can create our own pocket of low density by compacting the warp field about us. It would be like making an icebreaker for slow fusion gasses. What makes the geometry useful is that we don't have to make a huge field to encompass the ship. For every square meter of surface area we have to breach the pressure on the field increases steadily. A ship much larger than this one might become buoyant on the surface of the barrier and never pass through it, but we think the _Pioneer_ just manages to keep under the critical dimensions."

"Any dangers?" Koon asked.

Spaulding took up the question. "The warp field might compress the materials to fusion ignition, and spark a flare. However, I must point out such an event is unlikely. The energies necessary to loft one of those is beyond our ability to generate."

"The whole fleet doesn't produce that much energy," Gordon added.

"Not to distract you," Okuma said, "but is this energy safe to harvest? We're going to need a great deal of it over the years."

Koon nodded thoughtfully. Okuma had managed to keep the big picture in view. If this core venture was successful, they still had at least fourteen years to go before they were in position to meet up with _Voyager_. That did not take into account that was five years, give or take, of travel distance _Voyager_ had no way to make up. While it would shorten the trip to the Delta Quadrant, it made the distance they had to span somewhat longer as a result. Time was the one thing they were going to have a lot of regardless of shortcuts and high speeds. Time could lay waste to their best intentions. The only weapon they had against time was energy, and feeding 815 people while moving them beyond the speed of light took vast quantities every day. A substitute supply had to be found eventually.

"We think so," Spaulding said.

"I see no reason why not," Totem agreed.

"Can we test this breaching technique with a shuttlecraft?" Koon asked. "We don't want to bet all our lives if this goes wrong."

"Certainly," Totem said. "If nothing else it should prove us right about the size of the field."

"I'll get a shuttle ready to try it within the hour," Gordon said.

"How large a crew will you need?" Okuma asked.

Gordon considered for a moment. "Four. Five at the most."

"Select four people for the flight," Okuma ordered. "You stay here and monitor their progress from the transporter."

Gordon was unimpressed, "I really don't see that kind of danger ahead."

"And I see no reason not to be cautious," Okuma said.

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An hour later the shuttle _Lassen's Cutoff_ approached the Great Barrier.

"We're ready to begin," Lieutenant Guy Braum announced.

"Good luck," Koon told them.

As soon as they got within eight thousand kilometers, Braum ordered the warp field stabilized. The invisible bubble of subspace formed around the ship, and the crew noted the ride (about as rough as mild turbulence) smooth out.

"Look at that," Lieutenant Commander Joshua Garret said. "Particle energy just makes a slight indentation in the field and then slides on past."

"It's like a ship in a high sea," Lieutenant Rachel Hutchinson commented. "The warp field spans a distance greater than any one wave front."

Garret liked the comparison and told the girl so. He was first sub-Chief engineer aboard _Pioneer_, and he relished this assignment. For the last seven years he had been playing second fiddle to Chief Gordon, and he was eager for a change of pace. Even if the chore proved to be brief, at least he was in charge. But the real appeal came from being first in so many things. First through the Barrier, first back through, first to see what wonders lay beyond this cosmic frontier; his head practically burst with anticipation as to what he was about to see. His muscular form sat tense in his seat as the luminous frontier to another place rushed up to meet them.

"Commander, the ship's trying to yaw away from the Barrier," Braum said.

Garret studied the veiwport then turned back to his engineering readout. "We're still descending. The rate of descent is just slowing. Don't force it, just ride it out and find where it'll take us. I'll play with the warp field and see if I can change anything."

_Lassen's Cutoff_ straightened out her yaw, but Braum let the pitch drift up slowly. By now they were 20,000 kilometers from the surface below. The blue-white energy undulated slowly like the surface of the sea. Everyone aboard began stealing glances at the veiwport as the Barrier began show more detail.

"If the Med glowed in the dark, it would look like that," Garret said, "makes me want to go surfing."

"I'll load it into the holodeck when we get back," Lieutenant Brad Russell said. "I wouldn't mind trying it out myself."

Garret huffed, "We're getting distracted I see." His tone told everyone he was more resigned than upset with their preoccupation. Everyone nodded, took a last look at the veiwport for a while, and went back to work.

Braum continued to have trouble keeping the ship descending until finally the _Lassen's Cutoff_ would descend no more. She bobbed and weaved like a cork in a bathtub as Braum tried again and again to drive the ship lower. But all the ship could manage was a few meters more before she shot upwards again. "I guess we found a buoyancy point," he said.

"So it may appear," Garret said thoughtfully. "Maybe we need to crack it with a sharp blow. Lieutenant, take us up again and rush back down at half impulse."

Braum did as he was told. This time though, the Barrier seemed to part a fraction. For an instant they saw a dazzling glimpse of the core beyond. They saw a huge swirling gas cloud, backlit by the light of stars and novas. Beautiful colors arced about the cloud in lazy wisps where massive nebula stretched from the center. It was massive, and somehow Garret knew that the space inside was far larger than the exterior showed. And then it was gone as the shuttle was flung away from the Barrier.

When they came to rest, Hutchinson noted the thin wisps of gas drifting past them like sea spray. She noted the flare accelerated almost to the speed of light before it dispersed enough to prevent detection. Interesting. She tried to model out the particle behavior needed to produce this kind of velocity, but the energy derivative immediately came in conflict with the integral of the flare's curve. If her figures were right, energy was being concentrated in an area too small in four dimensions to contain it. But no explosion or flash had resulted to disperse this energy.

"Brad," Hutchison said, "can you confirm my figures for this particle model?"

Russell imported her file to his workstation and studied it thoughtfully. "That is a great deal of energy," he thought aloud. After a pause he snapped his fingers as the solution came to him. "We are moving the excess energy through subspace. That's why it hasn't flashed."

Garret was concerned, "Is that dangerous?"

Russell shook his head. "No, regular warp travel depends upon just this kind of flow. I've never seen it happen at impulse velocities perhaps, but we still see this all the time at even low warp."

Satisfied, the engineer turned back to Braum. "Try it at full impulse," Garret said. "I think we can make it this time."

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Captain Koon watched the shuttle bob and dance above the Barrier with no small amount of chagrin. "Garret must be getting thrown about pretty good down there," he said smiling. "If he's having this kind of trouble getting in, how hard will it be getting back out again?"

"Depends on the nature of the Under Barrier," Dr Spaulding said. "Material may find it easier to leave than enter."

"Kirk didn't have this kind of trouble," Koon mused.

"No, but he came at the right time," Hurst said.

"It's a shame we didn't bring a mystic with us," Forte said from the helm.

"More trouble than they're worth, Darin," Spaulding said.

A beep from the science console sounded, and Hurst looked down to investigate. His eyes went wide. Spinning around he yelled, "Evasive!"

Forte scarcely had the time to see what Hurst was so exited about before it was upon them. A massive flare moving beyond relative speed raced like a tsunami right at them. He engaged the impulse engines to fly straight up and away from the wave front because the wave spanned light years in any direction. He had to get the ship to warp soon. Scarcely had he engaged the impulse engines than a sudden lurch rattled the ship. Alarms went off, lights flickered, people were swept off their feet, and _Lassen's Cutoff _flew straight through the saucer section just forward of the Bridge.

The impulse engines died as critical control links were severed. Forte activated the warp engines. A blind jump into space was their only hope. Fortunately, the warp drive responded and the _Pioneer_ raced along the wave until two seconds later. The warp field collapsed as the wave front rose to meet them. In an instant the ship pitched up and raced away from the core with fantastic speed.

"Structural fields!" Koon yelled.

"Holding," Gordon reported.

"Get ahead of it, Darin!" Koon said.

"I've lost everything but maneuvering thrusters," Forte reported.

The _Pioneer_ rattled and roared like a ship in a hurricane. People frantically tried to get to their stations, but the floor bucked violently under them. Koon watched his engineering display steadily report disaster after disaster. They had to get out of this. "Get under it then," he ordered Forte.

"Aye, sir," Forte said.

_Pioneer_ rotated smoothly about its axis, careful to show her streamlined profile the wave. She edged into the front slowly like a man facing a storm of hail and sleet.

"Flare border in two minutes," Kree reported.

"Two minutes, Eddie, can you give me two more minutes?" Koon asked.

From his station in engineering, Gordon saw the manifold temperature to the structural fields climb to twice the maximum, "45 seconds at most," he shouted above the din.

"We have to reduce the pressure on the ship," Koon said.

"We could fire a photon torpedo close in behind us and create a counter gale to the wave," Okuma suggested.

"Carrie, do it!" Koon ordered weapons officer Lieutenant Carrie Locke.

Locke did as she was told; fusing the torpedo in the tube in fact, but when she fired it off the force of the wave front forced it harmlessly away. The ship didn't even shudder when it went off. "No effect!" she reported.

Koon shook his head. "Full spread directly ahead of us!" he ordered.

Locke fused them at full distance and fired eight torpedoes. The torpedoes strained to get out ahead of the ship against the force of the flare, but they managed to reach their standard detonation distance before they ran out of fuel. _Pioneer_ bucked as if it had hit a rock as the detonations raced back at them. But the explosions, under greater pressure from the flare, stretched into an oblong area of lower pressure. _Pioneer_ dived into it and the flare helped by pushing them along as it struggled to fill this bubble of relatively low pressure. Eight seconds later, the ship emerged under the flare almost two light years from where the started from.

The sudden quiet deafened the crew into shock. Everyone froze, fixated on the sudden stillness.

Down in engineering Gordon stood transfixed to the plasma manifold pressure and temperature gauges. Slowly they began to decline. The dropping motion of the readout motivated him into action. He increased the dynamic pressure and shut down the emergency gain to the structural fields, but a few plasma conduits still failed. With loud, buzzing thuds some let go of the plasma in various parts of the ship. Gordon ordered his people about until he heard the Captain calling over the Com.

"How's it look down there, Eddie?" Koon asked.

"We cannot handle another second of that," Gordon reported. "The plasma conduits will melt. We have multiple breaks all across the ship. There's more, but I've not had a chance to look into anything in detail."

"Well it looks like we're out of it right now. We can shut down and repair so far as I can see," Koon offered.

"That'll help. I can use some more people too," Gordon said.

"All I can spare," Okuma told him. "Just give me a list of repairs and I'll have everyone pitch in."

"Aye, sir," Gordon said.

Koon keyed the 1MC and said to the crew, "Look alive, people. _Pioneer _just struck a reef."

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_Captain's log supplemental: It's been six weeks since we encountered the flare, and I'm happy to say the damage is almost repaired. Working in shifts and forsaking all other duties, we've managed to get the ship fully operational again. We lost twelve people in the disaster, but it looks like all of them died when the shuttle struck us. It would appear that Lieutenant Commander Garret caused the Barrier layer in contact with his warp field to go critical when he tried to penetrate the surface. The resulting cascade harmonized with the field and accelerated the particles past the natural speed of light. We had five seconds before it struck us. When we tried to initiate a warp field of our own, we didn't realize we would be confronted with a subspace field exponentially stronger than our own. The flare still travels unabated into no-man's-land and we are gravely concerned with its progress. Dr. Spaulding claims he has a way to fix it before it endangers life. We will have to see to it after the warp core comes fully online. Services have been held for our lost crewmembers, and I've made the decision to turn the area of the saucer section where they died into a plasma buffer for energy surplus. Others wanted to leave the section clear in their memory, but we still have a long way to go. Lieutenant Commander Garret, Lieutenant Braum, Lieutenant Hutchinson, and Lieutenant Russell have been investigated in this incident and found not at fault for what happened. It was agreed they had no idea how to avoid the events that lead to the cascade. Their names will be cleared of all blame. May they rest well among the stars. Their bodies, and those of five others, were unrecoverable. Blame ultimately is mine. In trying to shorten the trip to the Delta Quadrant I made a decision that ran contrary to my orders. While I don't expect to keep my commission when and if we get home, the crew has refused to release me from my duties as regulations require. By unanimous acclimation they have elected to keep me as Captain of the Pioneer, and have drawn up a petition to Starfleet Command to confirm that decision._

"This is piracy," Koon told them.

"How so?" Okuma asked.

The assembled officers filled Koon's ready room till it overflowed into the bridge. Anxious, hopeful faces stared at him from ever quarter. A hand snaked down and touched his shoulder gently, followed by two more from crewmen standing behind his chair. Koon looked up to see four junior officers with pleading expressions attached to those hands.

"You can't just elect a Captain in Starfleet, that's what pirates do," Koon protested.

"We are a long way from Starfleet, Captain," Okuma said. "And we need a strong pillar to guide us home."

"If I retain command of the ship, we're still gong to rescue _Voyager_," Koon warned them. "Do you want that? Thirty to forty years of me being in charge may prove this decision foolhardy."

Uneasy expressions flitted about the room and a slight mumble of discontent followed into the bridge. But in a moment all eyes were back to him. Some were hopeful, some were confident, but others were resigned or desperate. It was clear they had made up their minds for many different reasons, but they all still regarded him as the best and only choice.

"I don't want to see you all get in trouble over this," Koon protested. There was a time of stillness while everyone considered the truth of what he said. Legally speaking, what they proposed was mutiny. Few had any illusions what would happen to them if Admiral Forrestal ordered Commander Okuma or someone else to take over. Lieutenant Commander Speer, the security chief, had informed everyone in great detail the consequences they would face even though he signed the petition himself.

"I'll be sixty-seven at least before I go to trial," Lieutenant Locke said with a giggle. "I think I'll manage."

Quietly at first, then louder as more joined in, laughter began to thunder through the room. One by one each considered the consequences and still found themselves a long way from Starfleet. The tension of the last six weeks burst as the simple task of survival was challenged by this trivial detail from a far-off, bureaucratic fleet. As one they brushed this speck of nonsense aside and got to the task of living another day. Captain Koon, they all agreed, was an essential tool in that process.

"It's not like you don't want the job," Okuma said when they calmed down.

"True," Koon said, "still I have to look at the regulations…"

Lieutenant Commander Speer interrupted him, "Let me worry about that, sir."

Koon looked about the room. He was frightened by the intensity he saw there. They might panic if he refused. _Pioneer_ and possibly _Voyager_ would be lost if that happened. They needed him now. "I suppose you've made your decision," he said.

"You could say that," Forte said.

"We can think of no one better," Gordon added, "not even back at Starfleet."

Koon smiled, "I'd be honored." He took a deep breath and stood to his full height. "The Admiral is on Earth, the Fleet is on maneuvers, our relay is on the edge of Romulan space, and our objective is in the Delta Quadrant," he announced speculatively. He slammed his fist onto the desk and shouted, "To hell with them we're right here!"

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Far removed from this small act of defiance, content and comfortable in his office, Admiral John Clay Forrestal listened to the latest report from, U.S.S. _Pioneer_. Captain Koon's image displayed the man's ill concealed contempt for what he had to tell Forrestal. The Admiral scarcely listened to what the distant Captain had to say; usually he only listened for key phrases pertaining to the crew. The rest of the mission he deemed irrelevant.

When the door chimed, Forrestal stopped the playback, closed the file and encrypted the message to a separate unit. Only after this was done did he answer the door. "Come in," he said cheerfully.

Commander Bill Porter strode through the door with a data pad in his hand. Porter had been Forrestal's aid for two years now, the last aid had been forcibly retired in disgrace. Average of height, powerfully built, the man had been a cross county marathon runner until his duties engaged too much of his time to keep in adequate shape for anything of consequence. His weathered features were usually neutral, but today his face snarled with intensity. He slapped the data pad on Forrestal's desk and stood rigidly at attention.

"You'll have to stop that, Commander," Forrestal chided, "it's unseemly." Referring to Porter's habit of shoving work directly under the Admiral's nose, Forrestal had grown intensely irritated with the notion that his aid could (in a manner of speaking) force action out of the Forrestal.

"Permission to speak freely, Admiral, sir," Porter said. His voice rattled Forrestal's bones even if the man spoke quietly. The Admiral often complained to the Porter that the man's voice was far too big for his frame.

Forrestal considered Porter's request at length. Finding nothing wrong with the way the Commander phrased the request, he nodded his assent.

"Admiral, sir, I find this data extremely suspect, sir," Porter said stiffly. The man chafed under the formality Forrestal insisted upon, but, being a good officer, he endured it without complaint. Forrestal secretly delighted in Porter's discomfort.

Forrestal sat back in his chair and regarded his aid with suspicion. "That has unpleasant undertones, Commander." He sat forward again. "Indeed, it has the ring of accusation. I trust you have the facts at hand to either allay my fears, or revise my first impression." Forrestal spoke softly in a precise enunciation. One had the impression the words were brittle enough to shatter like crystal.

"I do, sir," Porter boomed back at the Admiral. His plain face showed impatience. "The data we are using could only have come from a source closer to the phenomena."

"Just how can you assume that, Commander," Forrestal asked. "And I must emphasize the _assume_ part, this command does not deal with assumptions at any time. That kind of statement leans heavily that way."

Porter weathered the abuse without flinching. "I know of no array we affiliate with capable of tacking celestial bodies this far beyond our line of sight. Also, the precision of the data, magnetic rotation, specific debris mass, and so on have the science teams asking me what technique was used to verify it. I have no other sources that can come close to the quantity and precision of these sources." Porter paused, "I'm of little use to them if I can't tell them how to duplicate our findings."

Forrestal considered Porter at length again. Without speaking further, he reached forward and picked up the data pad. He briefly scanned it, and then decided to download it onto his desktop. When that was done, he scrutinized the screen and occasionally referred to the data pad. Taking his time, he left Porter standing there in silence. For over an hour they stayed there like that. "Just what don't you understand here, Commander?" he asked finally.

Porter continued without hesitation. "Sources Alpha to Epsilon, then source Falkirk, and source Tangerine all contain data that could only have come close in to the bodies they examined. Fleet says we have nothing remotely in that area. A few missions are in the planning stages to go out that way, but those are all years off. Even with _Voyager_ out that way, nothing like this can be achieved, or is even planned."

Forrestal scowled, "Let me get this straight, you're complaining that we have better data than expected?"

Porter did not waver, "No, sir. I'm simply at a loss regarding the sources. We cannot confirm anything from these sources. The data is neither strategic, nor critical. We should have no reason to hide…"

"Hiding, Porter?" Forrestal interrupted. "Starfleet does not hide scientific advances for the common good."

"Then the sources should be easily accessible," Porter reasoned.

"That has the sound of an accusation at last, Commander, very well. We have multiple sources in the way of various arrays and ships posted about the Alpha and Beta Quadrants. The sources you have outlined there are from a new Institute that specializes in compiling data from dissimilar organizations." Forrestal said this in a conspiratorial hush.

Undeterred, Porter asked, "Then why is this Institute obscured with multiple sources?"

"It's not in their charter to be so thorough," the Admiral answered.

Porter stared hard at the Admiral. "An intelligence post," he stated this flatly. Normally he didn't express doubts, and he had none here.

"A useful source of information," Forrestal corrected.

"An illegal one I gather."

Forrestal rose to his feet, "I don't like your tone, Commander."

Porter shook his head. "What treaty does it violate so I know whom not to disclose information?"

The Admiral regarded Porter another long moment. "Too many to count Andorians to Romulans, Vulcans, and Klingons alike, the Institute has enough there to offend about everybody."

Porter considered what the Admiral said at length. "Forgive me, Admiral, but may I make an assumption?"

"Provided it progresses the subject," Forrestal said.

Porter continued, "The only action this office has taken regards the dispersal of this information. Would it be safe to assume the data this institute compiles is fairly benign?"

Forrestal smiled, "Incredibly so. They will be closing down their operations soon. The need for counterintelligence has evaporated for the large part."

Porter frowned, "When?"

Forrestal sat back down with a regal flourish. "Shortly before I retire I'll close down the last links to the institute and we will speak no more of it. The final report will detail the strengths and weaknesses of our alliance. I can tell you the report so far found no real surprises."

"And the sources I mentioned will discontinue," Porter said.

"That is correct, Commander," the Admiral said.

Porter nodded, "Very well, sir. I'll see to it my report on this matter isn't filed with a board of inquiry. It would appear to be a waste of resources to trouble ourselves with the matter. My apologies, sir, was there something else I could do for you?"

Forrestal shook his head, "Not right now, Bill." He waved a hand in dismissal, and Porter left. As soon as Porter left, he breathed a great sigh of relief. Soon this little thorn in his side would be no more.

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"So what do you have in mind?" Koon asked Dr. Spaulding.

The taller man studied his notes for an instant to gather his thoughts then explained, "We use the same technique in reverse. We travel at high warp to the apex of the flare, and then modulate our warp field to harmonize with the subspace field we find there. After that we travel down the length of the flare at a matching speed to its source. The field should be reabsorbed into the Great Barrier and dispersed by the mass in play there."

"And promptly get crushed when the thing traps us there," Dr. Totem protested. "Captain, it would be impossible for us to escape this thing before…"

"What about reversing the planned course?" Lieutenant Kree interrupted.

Spaulding and Totem turned sharply to face her. After so long working together they were accustomed to arguing with one another, but in all that time, the pretty little Andorian had never interrupted them. "You mean traveling up the flare rather than down to the root of it?" Spaulding asked.

Kree nodded, "That could mange the same affect couldn't it?"

Spaulding considered this thoughtfully, but Totem shook his scaly head. "We cannot manage that kind of power, Lieutenant. The reason we made the decision to take the path we did is a result of field amplification. The very tip of this flare is a small volume and mass to contend with and we can capture it within our warp field. As we travel down towards the barrier, the mass we have to handle grows geometrically. By using inertia and shaping subspace with our own engines, we can cause the flare to rescind."

"So start at the base and let the inertia build slowly where it has to travel the least distance," Kree reasoned. "The mass of the outlying flare will carry the lower material back into the Great Barrier in a wave front won't it?"

Hurst leaned far back in his chair while the other scientist thought what about what Kree said. "That might work," Hurst said softly speculating on the geometry of the flare and the nature of quantum physics. "What do you think, Eddie?"

Before Gordon could answer, Dr. Totem blurted, "I worked out the math myself, Lieutenant. This is the only way to bring the flare under immediate control."

Gordon shook his head, "Not necessarily, think of the flare as a lever, Doctor, if we apply pressure to the end of it we will move it with less force, but if we break the lever we'll wind up with a fierce backlash. On the other hand if we apply a little force all the way along the lever and slide the fulcrum up the swing arm, we might keep it under control."

Totem wasn't satisfied. "What science do you base that on?"

Gordon smiled, "A swinging door hinge and an old household implement on Earth called a broom."

Before Totem and Spaulding could respond, Koon silenced them all with a wave of her hand. "Let's keep our options open, people. Gordon, look into it. Have Kree and Hurst work out a course we'll have to fly and keep me informed."

Okuma shook her head, "Eddie's running a madhouse getting the ship back together, Captain."

Koon nodded, "Point," he agreed, "Dr. Totem, have Kree and Hurst work through you. If you find anything promising, keep me informed."

All three looked unhappy with the arrangement. Totem, Kree, and Hurst exchanged a disgusted look before tuning reluctantly back to Koon. Despite the fact all three were of different species, the expression was a shared one. Formulating excuses was a universal trait, Koon thought idly.

Hurst voiced his protest first, "Sir, I have a full load already simply monitoring the flare, I don't see how…"

"You suggested it, Commander," Okuma snapped, "now defend it." The first officer glared at the three impatiently. Her gaze settled on Totem. "And I expect your best efforts to support each other even if you disagree."

Totem hissed with resignation. "Yes, Commander," he said clearly reluctant.


	2. The Flare

"Koon survived?" Captain Semmes blurted. Surprising Semmes was a rare thing. Any other day the woman was stoic as a granite slab. Anyone who knew her well would liken her to an implacable sage. She never asked a question she could not answer, and she always asserted her authority with the smug satisfaction of overwhelming strength. She was like Plato with an Uzi. She was like Buddha with a howitzer. She was like Jesus calling for blood to bathe in. But she was not one to stare slack-jawed in amazement. She did not gape, blurt, gasp, or suffer a moment thunderstruck, but she had just received the one thing she was unprepared for.

"We received their latest report. They detailed the damage they sustained. Captain Koon even apologized for being late reporting in, but they only repaired their sub-space array a week ago," Commander Tim King explained.

Semmes ground her teeth hard enough for the noise to send a chill up King's spine. It was a habit that she could not break despite her iron determination to stop, but in spite of herself she had ground no fewer than ninety-nine teeth to useless stumps. Even her dentist was resigned to keeping a few stocked for her use.

Koon! _Damn it to Hell, Peyter!_ She raged inwardly. Silently she bit her curse into her clenched jaw. Koon was supposed to die. _Pioneer_ was supposed to be lost. Her crew was supposed to be eliminated by now. All the witnesses had to be swept away. Of all the objectives her mission profile detailed, Koon and the _Pioneer_ was becoming the most frustrating.

Send them around a pulsar, they come back. Run them through a subspace minefield, they find a way through. Add four years to their journey, Koon accepts it. By all rights the crew should be ready to mutiny by now, but they kept plodding on. Time after time, _Pioneer, _or more specifically Captain Peyter Koon, frustrated Semmes efforts to wipe the record clean of its mission.

For six years now, Semmes had directed Koon about the 3KPC arm of the Milky Way in an effort to destroy him. The transmissions he sent out to Starfleet, Semmes intercepted and jammed. Her transmissions back to Admiral Forrestal included Koon's reports, but reached Earth via technology Starfleet hadn't and wouldn't develop for a decade to come.

Destroying _Pioneer _outright was tempting but ultimately unwise. Somehow it would come back to haunt them if it were reveled that a Starfleet Dreadnaught destroyed a Starfleet Cruiser. Let the hazards of exploration, freak natural phenomena or the Hirogen destroy _Pioneer_, but do not dirty the hands of Captain Angela Semmes or soil the reputation of Admiral Forrestal. That was as it should be Section 31 thought. Let the tail wag the dog, and keep to light and shadow.

But Peyter wasn't helping.

_If they sent a report last week…_

Semmes smiled a beam fit for the gratified. "Tell me, Commander, where does that leave us?" she said sweet as a Sunday choir.

King knew he was in trouble, but he resigned himself to the onslaught on the way. _This must be what a man felt like when his crops washed away after a flood,_ he thought. Farmers knew the risks involved, and even preyed for the rains. But when the downpour came and scoured the fields down to worthless mud, the only thing to do was get ready for the next season. Patiently, deliberately, and without enthusiasm, he answered what he knew was the tip of a spear aimed for his vitals, "Out of position, Captain."

"It troubles me sometimes that ambiguous language may make my orders confusing," Semmes confessed. "I mean, I may have the finest crew in Starfleet, but sometimes I can tax the vocabulary of the best man aboard. Do you follow me so far?"

"Yes, Captain."

"You understand that we must remain ahead of the learning curve both intellectually and physically?" she asked.

King was about to answer but she interrupted him. The more she spoke the faster and angrier the cadence became.

"You see I clearly remember a report coming across my desk describing in some detail the destruction of one _U.S.S. Pioneer_ with the loss of all 815 hands. This does not strike me as a trivial detail, mister. If what you say is true we lost that ship for six weeks. How do you lose _Nebula_-class ship with 815 aboard? I find that question compelling, Commander, I find it compelling to an alarming magnitude. If that question is answered by a member of _Pioneer's_ crew, Admiral Forrestal will suffer a great deal of scrutiny. If he suffers scrutiny, it may be revealed that we facilitated that loss. That strikes me as criminal, mister, criminal behavior aboard this ship. And I will not have my people suspected, interrogated, charged, or convicted of a crime. I know my crew is the finest in Starfleet, and I have no criminals aboard_. Am I clear?_" Her voice had risen to a shriek.

"You're upset, sir…" King said calmly but he was shouted down by Semmes.

"Shut up!" she snapped. "Don't patronize me when an answer is required! Our orders are to see to it that that ship is destroyed before we move on to our objectives in the Gamma Quadrant. We are not to link ourselves to that destruction in any way as specified in section 1A of the list of mission parameters. That means the top of the list, mister! The language is clear. It is not open for interpretation or modification. So how do you lose a cruiser with a living crew?"

Calmly King reported, "_Pioneer _was obscured from our view by the sub-space distortion until they repaired their communications array."

"Inadequate answer, Commander," Semmes barked. She leaned back in her chair and composed herself. She left unspoken the simple matter of locating _Pioneer._ A beacon had been planted aboard her before she left so finding her should be child's play, but pointing this out now would only state her ignorance about its not working. "Turn us around and get us back on station," she ordered.

Relived that the fit was over, King acknowledged the command, "Aye, sir."

Semmes tuned to the security officer, "Contact the nearest Hirogen scout. Give them as little information as you can, but peak their interest. Link into their net and scan the arm from here to the Delta Quadrant. I'll take the report in my ready room."

She stood and strutted from the bridge. Well aware that all eyes followed her, she took her time about it. Captain Angela Semmes was a stunning beauty, and she knew it. Tall, raven haired, and fine featured, she had the body of teenager, and the bearing of a Queen. Ever since she was a child, people struggled to please her because she was so striking. While civilization was supposed to look under all that, they almost never did. In Semmes humble opinion people hadn't changed since Adam and Eve. Beauty commanded attention, and that attention meant power for those smart enough to fashion it. While not personally vain, she was aware of the power vanity held over mankind. She could add or detract from men and women by her comings and goings, and she used that against people. Her ambition blinded her to the cruelty she inflicted by doing so, but she felt fulfilled nonetheless. Ambition blinded her to her faults, and fueled her hungers. But that ambition was not blind, nor did she feel it was unreasonable. Section 31's pragmatic approach to Starfleet policy suited her perfectly for this reason. Her superiors justified their means by the ends they hoped to achieve, and knowing those goals in detail, as she did, blasted away the pangs of conscience she felt on occasion. Sacrifices had to be made. It was better to pay them now and get it over with she felt.

In her ready room, Semmes opened a channel to Starfleet. Unlike Captain Koon who had to wait for months to get a reply over a subspace channel, Semmes linked to Admiral Forrestal instantly. The technology needed to accomplish this had been stolen from a Tholian diplomat twenty years ago and had taken Section 31's scientists ten years to figure out. Unknown to Section 31, the Tholians modified their system from Iconian technology they had uncovered shortly after that race vanished. Using a gap in dimensional space, the communication slipped out of the plane where life was possible, traveled for the same distance but not in time, and slipped out again. Bodily travel of this nature would crush flesh and matter under the weight of enthalpy just like the event horizon of a black hole, but the proper energy traveled across it with clarity and in narrow lines. The problem with this technology was the habit of that other dimension to compress the beam of energy in time as well as space. That meant that link ups were tricky and transmissions had to be in fits and spurts instead of a continuous feed. Through the manipulation of the receiver's recognition algorithms and the transmitter's pattern of transmission this method of communication proved to be quite practical. Since the transmitters had to strobe out data fragments in a specific length, this mode of communication was called the pulse array.

The Admiral appeared on the screen in good humor. "Hello, Angie," he greeted her, "this is a bit early today, so I'm guessing you have a problem."

Semmes ground her teeth again. She hated the name "Angie" and preferred to be called "Captain" or "Semmes" but Forrestal insisted on using it. "_Pioneer_ survived, sir. I have to return to station. We may be late for the link up with the _Caligula_."

Forrestal stared at her in shock.

"I'll send a complete report along with this transmission," Semmes continued.

"How late will you be to the Gamma Quadrant?" Forrestal asked.

"Six weeks, maybe more," Semmes speculated. "If you allow us to move in on _Pioneer_ directly we can eliminate her in short order. We'd be back on course in a month."

This was no idle boast. _U.S.S Damacletian _was a dreadnought of the _Caesar_-class. With her crew of 2,500 and outstripping the _Galaxy_-class in size by one and a half times, the _Damacletian _was among the most powerful ships ever made by Starfleet. Aboard she had the last generation photon torpedoes and the first generation of quantum torpedoes. She had phaser cannons, phaser arrays, Klingon disruptors, Romulan Plasma torpedoes, Cardassian repulsors, and a fourth generation cloaking device developed by Federation scientists. Semmes had the power, speed, and stealth to overwhelm _Pioneer_ in short order, but all those weapons, warp trails, and cloaking signatures would lead back to the _Damacletian_ and possibly back to Section 31. For this reason Forrestal had forbade Semmes from acting directly against _Pioneer_, or so he clamed. Another reason more rooted in fear than cold calculation, loomed large in the Admiral's decision not to destroy Koon.

"What makes you think you can find her?" Forrestal asked.

Semmes felt her impatience boil to the surface, but she managed to control her voice. "We observed the _Lassen's Cutoff _pass directly through the saucer section of the _Pioneer_, Admiral. We observed the _Pioneer _enveloped in a fusion cascade. Either of these events should have proven fatal to her, but we lingered, at our own risk, and watched a massive explosion within that cascade. We scanned the area for a day before we gave up the search. I wanted to stay a bit longer, but you ordered us to proceed to the Gamma Quadrant."

She hadn't answered the Admiral's question, but he took the bait all the same. "After your recommendation, Captain," Forrestal said acidly.

"We scanned that flare for two sectors, Admiral. We did our job. Now I'm telling you that an error was made on your part, and you have the nerve to question my abilities?"

Forrestal shrunk under her assault. He was not accustomed to willful subordinates, and his approaching retirement didn't galvanize his resolve. If anything he was wilting under the strain. The cleanup a career in Section 31 required tapped his reserves of courage and his intellect to the breaking point. He was becoming prickly and skittish. He took offense easily (always had), and startled easier with each passing day. Semmes imagined his retirement becoming one long panic attack at the rate he was going. People really didn't retire from Section 31 anyway; they went on reserve list of personnel instead. The image of the Admiral huddled in a darkened house with the windows shut and the doors locked dreading every incoming communication as a recall or court-marshal was easy to muster. The man's anxiety was turning him into a recluse. It amused Angela Semmes to no end.

The Admiral regained his composure, scanned the report she transmitted along with her message, and addressed the real issue why he was so upset. "What about the item?" he asked.

Semmes cooled her tone to an icy clip. "We believe they lost it in the collision," she said. "From the damage they reported, they can't have overlooked it if it were there."

"Then there is no reason to continue with the mission, Angie. If they are found now, we can walk away clean. Continue to the _Caligula _and let them wander off into the Delta Quadrant," he ordered.

Semmes was tempted by the idea. Leaving Koon out there to die slowly or unexpectedly appealed to her sense of mission. Forrestal's notion that their hands would be clean was not far from true. But blocking his transmissions back to Earth was the only snag. _Damacletian_ could only intercept narrow-band transmissions on a direct line of sight and broad-band transmissions within a certain range. Sooner or later Koon's story would be heard. If Forrestal were not able to deflect attention from his office, even after retirement, the inquiry would be embarrassing. Sending a purpose-made drone to accomplish this would take months of development and placement, and that might not work. The drone might be detected by _Pioneer_ or any of a dozen species around the Great Barrier. The drone might lose them or malfunction. Furthermore no alternative appealed to her beyond that. Hirogen didn't conspire to hide a starship; they were far too direct for that. Unleashing them on _Pioneer _was an option, but informing them of Koon's whereabouts might prove tricky without exposing the _Damacletian_. She knew that she had ordered King to proceed along those lines, but that would take potentially longer than reaching the _Pioneer _herself. The Hirogen communication network had taken _Damacletian's _scientists three months to figure out, and much of what they did with it was dicey at best.

In the Delta Quadrant, Seven of Nine had figured the network out in a little over a week by herself. Unlike Semmes, though, she had no patience for clandestine use of the network, and had overpowered the net alerting the Hirogen much to their annoyance. Semmes would have been disgusted. _Damacletian _used the network to shade and highlight. They led the attention of the Hirogen rather than merely talk to them. Semmes' way was elegant while Seven of Nine's way was efficient.

Shaking her head thoughtfully, Semmes said, "No, we have to proceed until Koon is run to ground. You can't afford the embarrassment _Pioneer's_ discovery would provoke. It would lead to us."

Forrestal was shocked. "Are you countermanding my orders, Semmes?"

Semmes walked Forrestal through her reasoning. After ten tedious minutes he consented. "I'll send the _Justinian_ to the Gamma Quadrant. Be warned that depletes our reserves within the Federation to the breaking point. There's trouble brewing with the Cardassians. We suspect the Dominion may be involved ahead of schedule. Having only the _Hadrian _and the _Trajin_ in the Alpha Quadrant means we're left with only _Pharaoh_-class dreadnoughts for heavy firepower."

"We have twelve _Pharaoh_-class ships, Admiral. That's more than enough firepower for any two wars," Semmes lectured. While she appreciated the input Forrestal was giving her, force dispositions were his problem, not hers. She only cared about keeping one puny _Nebula_-class cruiser out of sight until it was either destroyed or she lost patience with the exercise and atomized it herself. What stung was the abandoning of her Gamma Quadrant objectives. That was a bitter pill to take, and she fought back shame when she thought of that self-important fool Captain Emile Radcliff and the _Justinian _doing her job with the Dominion. But her duty to Section 31 was clear: _Pioneer_ must vanish.

"Porter is getting nosey," Forrestal said changing the subject slightly.

Semmes wasn't surprised. She knew Commander Dave Porter from Academy days. He was a taciturn, methodical man who despised secrets. Semmes thought his assignment to Forrestal's office a grave mistake from the first, or so she claimed. "Reassign him, Admiral," she suggested somewhat too sternly. "He's relentless. Dave won't stop until he's found the truth of what he's looking for."

Forrestal's arrogant demeanor crashed down like an avalanche. His nose darted up a few degrees, his nostrils flared, and his mouth thinned to a disgusted line, "You seem rather free with your council, Captain," Forrestal said. "I won't bore your simple mind with the necessity of keeping Porter here until my command is deactivated, but second-guessing my strategy is not acceptable."

Not impressed Semmes countered, "Your tactics leave much to be desired, Admiral. If you had just destroyed _Pioneer_ near the Neutral Zone like I suggested, I wouldn't be out of position now."

Forrestal sniffed, "That would have provoked a war we were unable to control. Are you so short-sighted as not to see that?"

Angered, Semmes ground her teeth again until her head rang. "You should speak, Admiral," she growled. "You're no more than…"

"Five minutes from home," Forrestal interrupted. "Yes, I know that, Captain."

"It's different out here near the core. I don't expect you to understand it like I do, sir. Besides a war with the Romulans would have been something we could have won." That had been her argument for years. In the most profound depths of Starfleet Office of Strategic Services (Section 31's parent agency) war plans had been in place for years that could overwhelm the Romulan Empire. What was lacking in them was a political will to use them. Every practical war plan in place conceded the need for a short, brutal, and costly war with Romulus, but the rewards outweighed the investment in Semmes' and many others opinions. That the war could be provoked was beyond question. The Romulans with their institutionalized paranoia were eager to lash out at the Federation. Two Federation Presidents had turned down promising invasion plans after clear provocation had been endured, and Section 31 knew that the Romulans were being crippled by the Borg. The recent incursions into Federation space had been matched by two equally devastating strikes into Romulan territories. Had a shrewd head of state been elected to office, neutralizing the Borg threat could have been the pretext for chartering the invasion and ending decades of cold war. The Romulans were weak, but no Chief Executive found had the nerve to face the arithmetic. Semmes argued that Section 31 could override the civilian policy makers, as was their primary function, but Forrestal and his superiors were confident another way could be found that could prove less costly. The Borg had to be neutralized before invading Romulus, and the _Damacletian _was supposed to move on to the Gamma Quadrant to harness the power of the Dominion against the Borg before the move on the Romulans could be made. For all their weaknesses the Romulans could still cripple the Federation and open the way for the Borg to move in. Semmes thought this line of thought was defeatist and pessimistic, but Admiral Grinnell, Admiral Richelieu, and the retiring Admiral Forrestal thought differently.

But the snag to all this was the evidence aboard _Pioneer_. Two Borg vencules were stored on her. Section 31 had made ten vencules in an effort to use them against the Borg, but they had quickly attracted the Hive Mind. Starfleet's first interaction with the Borg had happed when a Borg cube had come to activate the vencules. In the ensuing battle, five Section 31 cruisers and millions of citizens of a Neutral Zone planet had been assimilated and destroyed by Section 31's vencules; catastrophe had been averted only at the last minute by a Tal' Shiar' fleet that had happened to notice transwarp activity off their border.

While the Romulans remained oblivious as to what they had chased away at the time, they had been badly frightened by what they had seen. Convinced that the Federation was behind the Borg's move into their space, Romulan planners ramped up their war plans in an effort to defend themselves. Fortunately for the Federation Romulan planners were so paranoid that they didn't exclusively blame Starfleet. In a stunningly ironic twist, Tal' Shiar' intelligence convinced itself that a massive conspiracy between the Federation, Klingons, Cardassians, and a dozen or more other factions was acting against Romulus. Strategically such a union was too powerful to overrun through invasion, so Romulan planners decided to circle the wagons and defend themselves against the onslaught of this threat that surrounded the Empire.

That by huddling behind their lines like frightened children would make the Alpha and Beta Quadrants a safer place to live was something Section 31 found hysterical. Starfleet High Command thought the situation to be hopelessly provocative, and Section 31 thought that illusion to be their finest work yet.

But the cause of all this, the vencules, had been discreetly removed from the Neutral Zone. Six had made their way back to Borg Prime where the Hive Mind discovered the full extent of the Alpha Quadrant's resources that they had so far ignored. The two hundred Starfleet volunteers that had been assimilated by their homemade vencules were taken back to Borg Prime and never seen again. One vencule was destroyed by the Tal' Shiar' and the remaining three were removed by Section 31 to Wolf 359. When Section 31 destroyed one of the remaining three, the Borg somehow discovered this and moved on the Federation. Section 31 had enough warning to remove the remaining two vencules out of Federation space before the Borg made their first official incursion. _Pioneer's _mission had been formulated to expedite this removal. Knowing that destruction of the vencules attracted Borg somehow, Section 31 wanted to remove them as far away as possible; preferably without further loss of Section 31 personnel. _Pioneer's_ crew was never meant to return.

What Section 31 hadn't counted on was Captain Koon's ability slip out of trouble. The destruction of the evidence against Section 31 superceded all other mission requirements, but Koon refused to lie down and die. Oblivious to the cargo he carried, Peyter Koon had slipped out of more traps than a forewarned man might have hoped to manage. His reports reflected his complete ignorance of the forces arrayed against him. While he was convinced Admiral Forrestal was frustratingly inept, he failed to grasp the true nature of his plight.

In part this was due to Forrestal's and Semmes' efforts to keep him ignorant of their role in his problems, but the larger reason was Koon's distrust and distain for conspiracies. Much like Commander Porter back in Forrestal's office, Koon thought secrets were wasteful, counterproductive, and useless. He built up his crew's trust by holding no secrets and pointing no fingers. His security officer Lieutenant Commander Speer was one of the worst counterintelligence operatives in Starfleet history, and Koon had deliberately sought the man out for the mission in an effort to keep crew tensions to a minimum. How such a policy could work at all ran diametrically against everything Section 31 stood for, but they were more than willing to take advantage of Koon's inborn trust. Two operatives aboard _Pioneer_ reported regularly back to the _Damacletian _until they died aboard the _Lassen's Cutoff_.

Semmes argued further. "Admiral, if you want me back on track, let me take _Pioneer_ out now and let the Borg pick up the pieces."

Forrestal rolled his eyes. "That would expose us to an invasion rout we cannot defend, Captain."

Semmes glared at the distant Admiral with contempt. "Half that invasion rout is bordered by the Romulans. Do you believe they would not respond to a threat like that?"

"We can't count on them to act against them!"

"They're so keyed up right now; they'd leap at the chance to unload on the Borg."

"If they are expansionist, they could swing through the Klingon Empire and get us in a pincer while our forces were committed against the Borg."

"They won't risk allowing the Borg to gather that much momentum."

"You underestimate their racial prejudice against Klingons, Captain."

"You're ignoring what they will perceive as the mortal threat to their way of life."

Forrestal took a deep breath before he lost control of his anger. Semmes had almost sent him over the edge of a full fit. His frustration… no exasperation, with Semmes stemmed from her insistence on dictating strategy to him. She was a Captain driven to achieve glory, and she did not care if the delicate balance he struggled to achieve against threats to the Federation dictated discretion. "Your input is duly noted, Captain," he said in a dry, dismissive tone. "Return to station and see to it the Hirogen move against _Pioneer._" In enunciated, staccato syllables he ordered: "Do not take direct action against _Pioneer_ until authorized by me or Admiral Richelieu."

The screen went blank.

"Idiot!" Semmes snapped.

It took a while for her to collect her thoughts, but when she did she knew what she had to do. She called King on the intercom. "Commander, have the Hirogen net shut down in the Flare's sector. They'll go running to find out what bypassed the system."

King responded well. In fact he thought the tactic rather clever. "Aye, Captain," he said.

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"Strange," the day watcher said. He tapped a few keys on his display to slew more sensors onto the anomaly. He had a great many to choose from. Hunting ships were extravagantly equipped in this regard. Prey tended to find more inventive ways to fool detection than a mind could comfortably imagine, and the current sate of Hirogen technology reflected this in an ironic way. Hunting ships contained some of the most sophisticated detection and listening equipment ever devised, _bar none_. When tallied, fully two thirds more mass and power was dedicated to the sensors and sentry field than any other system. No one aboard appreciated it though. Descriptions of the ship detailed the weapons to an embarrassing degree of intimacy. Performance and agility also figured heavily into the worth of a ship. But the sensors were top shelf and rarely mentioned. Not that it mattered to the day watcher; he was only interested in potential targets.

Hirogen are talented students of behavior, in particular abnormal behavior. And right now space was behaving oddly on a grand scale. The Great Barrier was sending out a massive flare at a speed and mass unheard of to the day watcher. Scrolling through the sensor readout he juggled the figures until he found telemetry and a point of origin. Starfleet scientists might have killed for the data he discarded. Detailed as it was, they would have been frustrated by the Hirogen disregard for statistical data. Rather the data the day watcher was interested in was more general than that. It detailed trends and progress instead of the quantitative facts. What the day watcher finally produced resembled a weather report rather than astrophysics. Almost romantically, it told him where the flare started, its projected course and its effects on what lay in its path; however, the computers aboard immediately tasked themselves to past behavior and included it in the final readout. What caused it or what it was made of was of no concern to the day watcher or anyone else aboard. At least for the moment.

Satisfied, the day watcher altered the ship's heading and strolled to the Chieftain's cabin. "Possible target," he announced through the closed door.

From within a voice replied, "Nearby?"

"Two weeks away at high cruise," came the answer.

After a long pause the door dilated open and the Chieftain emerged, "That's a ways off. Let's have a look at what you have."

The day watcher returned to his station with the Chieftain following him. Once there, he seated himself and scrolled through the data. The Chieftain remained standing behind the day watcher. His height was unusually short for a Hirogen and sitting in the seat next to the day watcher would have obstructed his view of the readout. After examining the readout for several minutes in silence he asked, "Have you examined this holographically?"

"No," the day watcher admitted, "I thought this would interest you when I noticed this." He tapped his finger on the line data detailing relative acceleration and speed.

The Chieftain peered at the data. After a moment he sniffed the air in a Hirogen gesture of thoughtful consideration. A human at this point might say "Hmmm" or "interesting," but Hirogen sniffed the air like the predators they were. Not that they knew anything about humans, but all races have identical traits masked in different habits. "Show it on main holo," the Chieftain demanded.

In the middle of the bridge the flare appeared. Looking like a wisp of cloud erupting from a blue-white plane, it seemed to gather itself like a cyclone.

"Show it in time lapse," the Chieftain ordered, "One part per two hours."

The results were dramatic. The resemblance to a cyclone solidified. One could almost feel the unseen wind rushing towards the base of the flare and the cold air dropping away from the main cloud of the Great Barrier out into space. But no currents of this kind existed in space. Interstellar dust was far too insubstantial to support currents capable of affecting stellar bodies. Only radiation storms could make themselves felt on this scale, but the Great Barrier always absorbed them or slowed them. This thing was accelerating. Maybe by miniscule amounts (about 120 kilometers per hour per day) but it was speeding up.

A new voice interrupted the Chieftain's thoughts. "Look at that," the first lord said with uncharacteristic wonder, "It began in subspace. One moment it wasn't there and the next it was traveling at warp speeds."

"That means it's not natural," the Chieftain declared. "Every hunter within ten-thousand light years will be on the way. We have to get there soon." He turned to the day watcher, "Well done, Levran."

The day watcher felt a rush of excitement. Now that the Chieftain had addressed him by his name, the whole crew would do the same. Hirogen crewmembers achieved status, indeed identity, from exploits alone. New crewmembers lived aboard in a social limbo where they were treated like parts of the ship. They were not spoken to unless it pertained to their duties. They were shoved aside in the corridors as if they were sentient bits of furniture that had the bad manners to get up and walk around. Levran had been treated to this cold treatment for over a year. He'd been cursed at, scolded, beaten, and mostly ignored. But now he would be part of the crew. All that would change.

A name had that kind of power to Hirogen. Names were attached to deeds and history, more so than dates. Names could be stitched into legend, and deeds were the currency of folklore. All Hirogen were obsessed with this fact of life. They based their worth on their accomplishments, how many kills, which hunts, and the intimate details of those hunts were what they remembered. Immortality waits only for glory.

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_Pioneer _moved cautiously towards the base of the flare. On the main viewer the thing looked like the most violent of waterfalls. Even half a light year away, the thing dominated the screen.

To Okuma it resembled an approaching Martian dust storm. She remembered those well from her days growing up there. Nothing was feared more on Mars than the dust storms. The swirling, churning masses of dust seemed to roll across the land in great, clawing sheets of debris picked up from the arid surface. From horizon to horizon, the storms would blot out the white sky in an amber haze until finally the darkness would engulf the settlement. There was an instinctive rush to dive for cover when the winds slammed against the buildings. Even though the Starfleet Core of Engineers claimed the structures to be completely safe, everyone felt the rooms shudder before the onslaught of wind and sand. She felt the same trepidation now as she watched the viewer. The march of the storm, the sudden lull leading the weather front, and the howling rush of the wind as it gathered itself, all of it could be translated to what she knew was before them.

"We'll have to start here," Totem said. "We need to draw the flare this way."

Samantha Okuma thought the notion insanity. She knew the science behind what they had to do to get the flare to recede, but she only had to look at the thing to feel uneasy. It was like standing before an onrushing tsunami, and declaring your handkerchief would soak up the water. _We want this thing coming towards us?_

Forte and Kree started the sequence. _Pioneer_ rolled its dorsal side towards the Great Barrier. Behind her the warp field stretched out in a long and extremely wide arc. The shape of this field was crucial to success. It would change as they progressed up the flare; becoming longer and narrower as they went so that they could capture as much mass as possible. Theoretically, their top speed could only exceed warp three with the field stretched out so far, but Totem had his doubts about that. The mathematics reached a chaotic cascade only a third of the way up the flare.

Dropping into subspace _Pioneer _scraped as close to the Great Barrier as they dared. "Raising a rooster tail," Forte reported when he checked the aft sensors.

"Rooster tail, Lieutenant?" Totem asked.

"A racing term on Earth," Forte explained. "We're raising a column of dust behind us as we go. During a race, that tends to mean a speedy pace."

"You'd never guess we're only going warp one," Koon added then turned to the science officer. "How's it looking so far, Willie?"

Hurst did not turn from his station. "Just like the simulation, Captain. We should know a lot more when we make our turn."

_If the blasted thing doesn't draw us in and crush us_, Okuma thought. Gordon was confident that would not happen, but he also mentioned that they would not survive another trip inside the flare. _Pioneer_ may be functional and underway, but she was bruised and bloodied. The Chief Engineer had months of work ahead of him to bring the ship up to standard. A trip to dry-dock would be ideal, but the nearest one of those was decades away. As it was, the ship moved and acted well enough to attempt the Flare Jump, as they had come to call it, but time rather than _Pioneer's_ working order dictated their actions. If they did not do something soon, the flare would be beyond their ability to control. Seven weeks of uninterrupted growth had made a monster out of the thing. If allowed to grow, the size and destructive power would increase geometrically. Statistical models confirmed the beginning of the classic S-curve when the force of the shock wave was measured against time. Spaulding and his team made that point almost hysterically clear when they began studying it.

"Warp two," Forte reported.

"That's a little too soon, Lieutenant," Hurst said from his station. "Try to slow us down so we reach the initial point within two nanoseconds of calculated."

"Aye, sir," Forte said.

"IP in four minutes," Kree reported. The current obsession with the initial point was not in the slightest bit trivial. If they reached the IP going too fast, they stood risked overshooting their chance to turn away from the flare itself. If they reached it too late, they were in danger of being drawn into the Great Barrier by virtue of the gravitonic forces they were stirring up behind them. Implosion of the hull or collision with the flare was the cost of the slightest error while beginning their turn up towards the end of the thing. Kree preferred overshooting the IP to otherwise; at least it would be over in an instant. Hurst told her he preferred the latter since they might be able to hold the ship together just long enough to escape… maybe.

Commander Okuma was terrified of both, and right now her fears ran riot in her mind.

For the last few weeks she had kept herself occupied with the duties of the ship, and it had almost drained her. With the repairs to the ship, the monitoring of the flare, and researching schemes to reverse the damage they had done, she'd had little time to be scared. _Pioneer _was only just well enough to move and it had taken every waking and resting moment to get her here at all. Between catnaps she shuffled people about the ship shoring up hull breaches, stringing plasma conduits, and keeping the life support functional. Wherever she could, she bent her own back to the repairs and she had the aches and pains to prove it.

The largest problem was the life support. Even now sections of the ship had to be evacuated due to the risk of any number of catastrophes. The doctor had been kept busy with people falling victim to the utter breakdown of the system over the past few weeks. Two men were burned when the room they were in suddenly flashed into a plasma oven. More crewmen had almost frozen to death when power went out in the hanger bay. Okuma herself had almost suffocated in her sleep when the air supply in her quarters had shut down while she was napping. The plasma conduits to almost every system had overloaded not to mention to beating the hull had taken. Like a poltergeist the ship attacked them with systems they used to trust, and it did so at the worst times. Only the fast action of a Bolian Engineer had saved the lives of three crewmen and himself when a hull breach had exploded out of transporter room two. With a deft punch to the controls he initiated an emergency transport directly to transporter room one of every object in the room as the air howled into space. The transporter had been destroyed by the effort, but the Bolian and the other crewmen had survived with serious injuries. After that, Okuma ordered the transporters in the shuttles manned and ready until the primary units aboard could be repaired. Over the course of five more hull breaches, everyone endangered had managed to be saved by this measure.

Working in such an environment made everyone jumpy to say the least. Nerves worn raw by the endless procession of hazards, all deadly, made morale low and tempers short. Even a Vulcan crewman had resorted to giving his work partner a neck pinch when he could stand the crewman's semi-panicked blubbering no longer. Fights broke out, and some crewmen refused to work together after exhausted minds and spent bodies were forced to superhuman effort merely to survive only a few seconds more. And it was Okuma's job to take care of these people.

Using an iron will and an impatient ear, Samantha kept the crew from falling apart. Koon played his own role, but it was Sam's place to handle the crew directly. Koon held the will while she held the whip, in a manner of speaking. Behind her back she was called "the overseer" and "Dragon Sam." Hard to believe at one time she was a popular officer. That was no longer true. Koon managed to be respected if not loved. She was hated.

That she was tired and stressed did not occur to Samantha as the reason behind her isolated feelings. She knew what they were saying and she knew why. She was tough on everyone but…

"Commander?" Koon asked interrupting her thoughts.

Okuma turned to see her Captain looking intently at her.

"I'm sorry, sir. I was just thinking about the…" she said.

Koon cut her off. "Relax, Sam," his voice boomed softly in her ear. He sounded gently concerned. He spoke quietly enough so that anyone else wouldn't be able to eavesdrop. For the first time in years his Russian accent colored his words. "Your hands are bleeding."

Sam looked at her lap and found she had bunched her fists so tightly, that blood oozed from where her fingernails had dug into her palm. Shocked she almost lost her hold on her emotions. "I'm sorry, Captain," she blurted, "It's just that…"

Koon did the strangest thing. He leaned forward and kissed her quickly on both cheeks in the Russian fashion. It happened so fast and so unexpectedly she could only gape at him. "Have I ever thanked you?" he asked. "You've pushed these people harder than I thought they could run, and they never broke. When we're done with the Flare Jump, take a day or two off."

"But there's still so much to do," she protested.

"And I'll see to it while you get some rest," he assured her. "I can make it an order, Commander, but I shouldn't have to."

"Captain, I," she began, but Koon kissed her again. It was a peck on the lips that so astonished her that for a few seconds all she could think about was how strange it was to be kissing a superior officer. When he withdrew again there was a twinkle in his eye. What was he thinking?

"Don't suppose I should ask what you're doing," Lieutenant Commander Speer said.

"It's a Russian custom to thank good people for good work," Koon said with a smile.

Speer gave off a derisive snort, "I'll settle for a handshake, Captain."

"I'll remember that," Koon said.

"IP in thirty seconds," Kree said.

"Slow it down, Darin," Hurst ordered.

"Power output is feeding off the Barrier, Commander, getting the ship to slow down is a bit tricky," Forte said.

"Can you slow down at all?" Hurst asked.

"Not without being overtaken by the rooster tail behind us, or collapsing the field," Forte said nervously.

"Can you make the turn?" Koon asked.

"It'll be a bit harder, but yes, sir," Forte said.

"Lieutenant, we can't risk ourselves that way," Hurst barked.

"Let the boy work, Willie," Koon said. "He'll do what he must."

"But…"

"We don't have time to debate it, Willie," Koon said with uncharacteristic steel edging his voice. "I'm not taking him out of that chair until he's done or dead." Tuning to Forte he said, "Do what you have to, Darin."

"IP in five… four… three… two… one…" Kree counted off.

_Pioneer_ nosed down away from the Great Barrier.

Over the span of a few seconds, the ship doubled its speed without power from the warp core. Darin Forte noticed this, but could only feed in corrections to their flight plan.

From his console Willie frantically scanned the data. "Forte..?" he said drawing the word out into an uneasy question.

Spaulding and Totem were looking at the data in alarm. The numbers were already in cascade, fully fifteen seconds ahead of the model. Normally at odds with one another, they exchanged an alarmed glance. Seeing the mutual certainty that everything they were looking at was wrong, both scientists sprung into action.

"I'll take the data," Totem said.

"I'll take warp control," Spaulding said.

Instantly the two scientists were babbling mathematical jargon to each other several orders of magnitude above everyone's comprehension. Frantically Spaulding peppered the keys with entries while Totem did the same.

"Sir?" Lieutenant Shin the Com officer asked nervously.

Koon looked at the girl then tuned around to see what she was staring at. Totem and Spaulding had the look of automatons. Koon had once met the famous Lieutenant Commander Data and watched him pour over difficult readings from several sources with the kind of speed he both envied and feared. The android's hands seemed to flutter over the controls like humming bird wings in flight. His body became fixed in place as he devoted most of his processor capacity to the data before him. While Koon was suitably impressed by what he saw that day, what stuck with him was the fixated expression on Data's face. His eyes were wide, his lips were pressed into a thin line, and he never blinked. The curving surface of his eyes remained so still they reflected the readouts in legible detail. Totem and Spaulding now emulated the same expression of intensity.

Something was wrong.

To punctuate this realization, the intercom chirped and Eddie's voice demanded his attention, "Captain!"

"Go on, Commander," Koon said without taking his eyes off the two scientists.

Almost in a panic Eddie blurted out, "I've lost warp control down here, and the nacelles are critical!"

Calmly Koon told him, "Don't worry about the warp control, Commander. Doctor Spaulding and Doctor Totem have it."

From the helm Forte added, "Just find a way to keep the nacelles glued to the ship at warp nine with a warp one output."

"Did you catch that, Eddie?" Koon asked.

"Catch what?" Gordon asked.

Forte repeated himself into the intercom.

"That explains a lot," Eddie said thoughtfully.

What Eddie, in fact no one, wasn't seeing outside was the chaos the ship was undergoing. Forte was skimming the Flare close enough to touch. Debris surrounding the Flare was everywhere like a sandstorm. The main deflector pushed much of it around the ship. As the dust was pushed aside it collided with other debris causing friction and heat. Fluorescing under the onslaught of sudden energy the dust glowed white hot directly I front of the main deflector and cooled to a deep blue at the perimeter of its cone. Since Spaulding and Totem were constantly reshaping and rephasing the warp field, the main deflector automatically reconfigured its output to match the shape of the field causing the dust to swirl as the output pulsed and shifted. For the first time in any of their careers the crew saw the outline of the deflector field as a spinning heart of a typhoon. As the ship accelerated that typhoon distended ahead of the ship and squeezed the warp field ever closer to the hull.

Beside _Pioneer_, the warp nacelles whipped about so violently that they came mere feet from colliding with the hull. Designed for a specific speed for a specific output of power, they were almost shut down in an effort to slow the ship, while Spaulding and Totem frantically adjusted and readjusted the shape of the warp field. However the ship continued to accelerate, caught in the same subspace cascade the _Lassen's Cutoff _had created. Connected to the side and rear of the ship by thin outriggers intended to flex with acceleration, they were absorbing torsion from the mission module high over the saucer section. Connected to the ship by a sturdy pylon, the mission module used part of the warp nacelles structural webbing to balance itself during high warp acceleration. Unfortunately the nacelles were accelerating slower than the main body of the ship. The mission module pressed forward into the structural spars and weakened them. As a result the nacelles began to toe in towards the nose while the warp filed tried to press them along the line of flight. Eddie had never seen it happen. Nacelle flutter was heard of, but not in a progressive loop.

Racing along at warp eight, instead of the predicted warp two, _Pioneer _moved right onto warp nine and faster without adding a watt of power. She was riding a wave now, her belly to the stars beyond, and her back to the storming surface of the Flare. She spiraled up its flanks like a tetherball, tighter and faster.

Inside g forces began to crush everyone down to their seats or to the floor with gentle yet increasing force.

Forte was sweating freely now. Balancing the ship against the contrary forces at work, he focused all his attention on his flying. If he tried to turn too tight, the ship would collide with the Flare. If he turned too wide, centrifugal force would cause immediate loss of control. If he went too fast, the ship would be crushed, and if he went too slowly, the rooster tail would catch up with them and kill them all. To complicate matters, the deflector dish was picking up objects too large to push aside in their flight path. Forte had to weave along their flight path in spasmodic little jinks that, in a ship this size, were near impossible. _Pioneer _was dancing as never before. She bobbed and weaved like a serpent past asteroids, comets, and planetoids missing some by bare kilometers to spare. As the speed reached warp 9.6 the ship began to shake in a progressive palsy making maneuvers even more difficult. It was like trying to ride a bike in an earthquake.

"Uh-oh," Forte murmured. Directly ahead lay not one but thousands of little fragments, the remains of a planet crushed by the Flare. He couldn't sweep past it or around it. The field was just too large. "Locke!"

The weapons officer saw it coming and unloaded a full spread of torpedoes without being ordered. In less than a heartbeat, the torpedoes sought out eight of the largest objects in their path and smashed them. _Pioneer_ raced through the explosions followed by the rooster tail which promptly consumed the debris.

Once beyond the torpedo wake Forte saw one last chunk of debris in his path. Irregular in shape and five hundred kilometers long, it had the mass of Olympus Mons and would not be moved.

"Oh, God," Locke gasped. In a split second of synchronicity, she and Forte knew what they had to do. Forte swung the jittering ship to a jagged outcropping of rock while Locke targeted it. They couldn't move beyond it, but the might make it _through._

Her nacelles shaking violently and unable to slow down, _Pioneer_ performed the maneuver badly. She shuffled to the side in a stuttering wobble. Her nose yawed uncontrollably to either side, but she jittered to about the point Forte wanted her to.

Locke fired the phasers and cut the outcropping off the larger asteroid. It was an exquisite shot, only three other people in Starfleet could have done it, but it was not enough. The separated chunk of debris moved far too slow to clear _Pioneer's_ hull between it and the asteroid.

The chunk tripped over the warp field, moved a fraction and struck the mission module at relative speed. _Pioneer_ shuddered and the loudest _bang_ anyone had ever heard made everyone duck their heads instinctively. Another chunk about the size of a man loomed over the ship in a lazy, almost playful arc. After a second being pushed ahead of the ship by the subspace bubble, the chunk seemed to gather itself and struck the saucer section just aft of the bridge. While it did no real harm the main viewer showed the rock racing right at them up to the point it skimmed an inch above the bridge, and deflect off the curved surface of the saucer.

_Pioneer _bucked, but did not slow. The nacelles whipped outward from the saucer until they were perpendicular to their intended fixture in less than a second. Impossibly the outriggers stretched out to almost twice their original length, but did not break. Down in engineering all the crewmen heard two dull grinding sounds, massive and shrill. Those close to the outer hull saw the metal bulge inward as the nacelles pressed against the outer body. Then the force of the warp field acted against this motion and brought them back into line where they evened up and were stable at last. Without the mission module between them to transfer harmonic torsion, they became stabilized by the warp field rather than by the structure of the ship.

Under Forte's hands the ship responded like a champion now. Having shaken off a nasty little tic under her saddle, _Pioneer_ wanted to run.

"Mission module hit!" Okuma reported. "It's sealed off."

"What about repair crews?" Koon asked.

In front of him Forte cheerfully muttered, "Huh, that's better."

"It's gone, Captain," Okuma said.

"Eddie," Koon said into the intercom, "Can you keep the ship together like this?"

After a pause the Chief engineer said, "Yeah, the control ends weren't severed, but the warranty is officially blown."

"Whatever you need, Chief," Koon said. Turning to Speer he asked, "How about shields?"

"Unwise," Hurst answered from his station. "We might disrupt the cascade." In fact he was amazed by what he was seeing. Totem and Spaulding had reshaped, rephased, and adjusted the power output to the warp field like conductors in font of a symphony. The original model would have been inadequate seconds after the IP. Now they were close to succeeding. The Flare was beginning to bend back towards the Great Barrier. The cascade behind them was still chaotic, but the two scientists shaped and reshaped it to their needs. Chaos was translating into infinite power resources that _Pioneer_ controlled instead of a random destructive tide. "Kree, second IP in twenty seconds after recalculation."

"Aye, sir," she replied. Kree was sweating badly for an Andorian. Her hair was pasted to her scalp in dirty yellow clumps while salty fluid dripped into her eyes. The path ahead of them kept changing. It bucked and rolled like bad lover on a bed of gelatin. Plotting their course much more than a few seconds ahead of Darin's sensor coverage was worthless. She knew where they had to end up, but the path there was circuitous, erratic, and cast in shadow beyond the horizon. It was like flying at top speed through a maze, but she knew in an instinctive sense how to get there. She just would not have the luxury of examining the safety of the ground where she placed her running feet.

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"Impressive," the Chieftain said. "Do you suppose they know we're here?"

Levran thought not. From the looks of things whoever was flying that ship was very busy indeed.

On the holographic image the flare began to convulse. First Lord Heartstock waved at the flare as it hooked back upon itself. "There," he declared, "When that flare collapses we should be here," he said pointing to a spot on the holo just beyond where the tip of the flare would sink back into the barrier. "Take them from head on when they are exhausted."

"You assume they will be exhausted when they reach that point," the Chieftain chided. "We don't know how difficult this is for them. For all we know they do this sort of thing all the time."

Heartstock shook his head. "That has to be intense," he argued. "The power output alone would cripple us. It would be best to lance out at them when their guard is down."

"Nervous, my Lord?" the Chieftain asked.

Grivnash shook his head thoughtfully. "I think he's right," he said. He was the night watcher Levran's immediate partner and superior. A veteran of many hunts, his powerful frame held a methodical mind. His was the art of tracking, and it made him one of the most conservative men on the crew. Careful, deliberate attention to details caught prey not weapons, he often argued. In his view, the kill was far less exciting than finding and tracking a target in difficult conditions. It required skill, patience, cunning, and judgment to track. Killing took aggression and skill but little else. Peering at the holo a moment longer he suggested, "We could find cover here, and surprise them when they get underway again." He indicated an unremarkable flare erupting from the Great Barrier near the point this new ship would be when the big flare collapsed. "Use this as a blind, and let them move right past us."

"The talk of old men!" Heartstock sneered. "We can overwhelm them in seconds without hiding like nervous children."

"When the prey is wary, my Lord, we would be wise to keep our presence hidden," Grivnash warned quoting the Hunters Scripture.

The Chieftain nodded then tuned to Levran. "You found it, Levran, do you have something to add?"

"They're wounded," Levran said. "I watched them while we made our way here. For weeks they scarcely moved."

Heartstock was unimpressed, "You call that wounded? They've almost outrun our top burnout speed." He spoke of the speed their ship could not exceed without immediate, catastrophic failure: about warp 9.992 depending on the conditions of subspace. This close to the Great Barrier: that speed began to drop in an exponential relationship with the distance from the Barrier. But mathematics was not something Hirogen were terribly adept at, barring vectors, so no one thought to figure up just how fast they could go that close to the Barrier. And besides, they had no intention of using warp speed for a sustained time. All they needed to do was get within transporter range.

The Chieftain nodded, "Good point, my Lord. We may have only a glancing chance to get aboard. We'll ambush them while they're preoccupied. Unload a full barrage on the ship, cripple it, and board her before they know they're being attacked or if they ran into trouble with this phenomenon," he said indicating the declining flare.

Do you know something we don't, Chieftain?" Grivnash asked. "You seem all too eager to strike." Adopting the tone of a seasoned professor lecturing to a misguided student he expanded upon his view. "We have never seen a ship like that before," he said itemizing his train of thought by tapping the arm of his seat. "We don't know what they are doing. Furthermore we don't know how they are doing it. We don't know the size of the crew, or the floor plan of the ship. We don't know their weapons capability, or their sensor capability."

"All good points," the Chieftain interrupted. "But audacity will take the day, I believe."

Grivnash's mood soured. "You're advocating a brawl," he said. His sensibilities were deeply offended by needless conflict. Not that he didn't want a share in the kill, he did, but a good hunt was elegant, tightly orchestrated violence not battle. A good hunter could kill any time, but a master hunter was never seen by the prey even after its life escaped the body. "Since when do we resort to such crude tactics?"

"You're beginning to annoy me, old man," Heartstock growled. "Have you lost the killing instinct?"

"No," Grivnash responded coolly, "but you've obviously abandoned all cunning." His tone and his eyes did not convey triumph or smug satisfaction as he pronounced the insult. Rather his level gaze and flat tone revealed deep reproach and tired regret. "Has your stock of trophies thinned down enough to quiet your name, Heartstock?"

This was a statement of the shameful trend the Hirogen faced. For centuries the race had hunted and killed from the Galaxy core to the mid reaches of the Delta Quadrant. They had been so efficient doing so that most of their territory had been hunted dry. Dry referred to the lack of appropriate blood available to spill appropriate blood meaning all but Hirogen. The last few years had been so dry that reports of Hirogen tribes turning against one another were becoming common.

For traditional Hirogen this kind of hunting was a taboo ranking right up there with cannibalism and incest. While not exactly a crime (for no absolute laws exist for minds driven by pure instinct) it was nonetheless alarming and revolting. Hirogen were hunters not prey, and the distinction was at the core of their species' identity.

But legends are written to honor deeds, and trophies of those deeds, be it mental or physical, enriched Hirogen life. Heartstock may have had status, but his store of legend was wearing thin. He had not seen a hunt in over two years, and the inaction chafed at his pride. Who would remember his name a year from now? How about ten or twenty? In an effort to keep his name spoken, Heartstock had been bartering off his physical trophies (hands, skulls, weapons, and the like) to prove his aging exploits. A less prideful hunter wouldn't trade mementos to save his life, but Heartstock was of a new generation. Born after the great migration, he had watched dozens of species evaporate before the new threat from the Borg. Driven before this implacable race, much of the species not already hunted down to extinction fled before the advancing collective. Most had vanished literally overnight leaving much of their possessions behind and even food cooking in kitchens. The Borg frightened those in their path like no other, and it left much of Hirogen space empty.

To the Hirogen, Borg were unimpressive prey. They lacked the cunning only self-preservation could supply. They lacked individual will. When confronted or cornered, they resorted to bald bluster and unimpassioned attacks. Hirogen could scarcely credit their conquest. Were the worlds of the Galaxy really going to fall to these perverse, forever dammed brutes? So many other fine species deserved their place ascendant over the Borg, and the Hirogen could appreciate that fact since they had hunted them. With the perspective only hunters could possess, they felt the loss of their "prey" like the passing of loved ones and dear friends. So acutely depleted were the hunting grounds that the younger generations of Hirogen now faced the unthinkable: life without the hunt or hunting Borg. Surrounded by the lore of their glorious elders, many young hunters felt shame stab at their souls. Despite the fact that it was the Borg not the young Hirogen that were to blame for the deserted space of their home, the shame missing their steps into legend frustrated many like Heatstock to no end.

In an angry shout Heartstock bellowed, "That's easy for you to say…"

The Chieftain cut him off with a calming gesture. "That's enough, Heartstock," he said gently. "We can discuss our virtues like the honored hunters we all are." Dropping his voice to an iron note of resolve he added with glowing eyes surveying the room, "but not right now." Turning to Grivnash he confessed, "I'm reluctant to charge in like this, but we may have no alternative."

"We can track them, Chieftain. Given time and application…" Grivnash protested.

The Chieftain cut him off, "Given time, the other tribes will arrive. I looked over the net an hour ago. This whole sector dropped offline weeks ago," he declared. "Other ships will come to investigate this. Are we in agreement?" A hushed pause filled the bridge as the others digested the truth of the Chieftain's thinking. When he spoke again the sudden urgency he felt swelled in the hearts of the Hirogen, "We have no time," he pronounced. "Either we strike a fast blow, or others will get the kill."

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This was exciting. Captain Koon found himself envying Lieutenant Forte. In his day Koon had been among the best pilots in Starfleet. He was noted for improvisation and acute situational awareness. He was that man in a formation that knew where everyone was after they scattered to hell and back. In tight, claustrophobic situations he was the man to call, and it showed in his early service record. His first assignment had been a space dock pilot above Earth, one of the most congested traffic lanes known. From there he moved on to an extended assignment to do much the same thing on Kronos. Moving Klingons about their home world with fully laden warships proved to be more challenging and perfectly suited to his skills.

For a time his was the name used when Starfleet asked for its best helmsman. Then Picard and the _Stargazer _stole the limelight. Soon the young officer began to show his mettle in one skirmish after another. When Picard made Captain, no one was surprised for the man had a knack for being at the tip of the spear.

Koon had been bitter about this ambitious upstart when he first heard of him. His assignments had been calculated to make him rise rapidly through the ranks, but instead they became the unglamorous, tedious work most officers had to deal with most of their careers. Nothing could shake this bad luck. Koon sought out and got difficult and visible commands to which he applied himself with the last shred of his soul only to find out he was in the wrong place to shine. In fact a pattern emerged. He began following Picard around. Koon found himself negotiating the finer points of treaties, cleaning up after engagements, and soothing the hurt feelings of the people Picard encountered during his adventures.

Frustrated, bitter, and overworked, Koon would have ruined himself had another officer not pointed out to him that Koon had never met Picard. Perhaps there was more to the man than the mess Koon cleaned up. Convinced he was right about his rival, Koon made an appointment to see Picard to discuss business.

It was a revelation.

Picard tuned out to be engaging, charming, and mystified as to why Koon took on such thankless work. He expressed his whole hearted sympathy for the problems Koon presented, and it was discovered that the two men shared an identical vision for Starfleet. Soon the meeting turned into a working lunch. Then lunch turned into the rest of the day.

Not to say differences did not exist, they did. Koon was a pragmatist. Picard was a romantic. Koon tended to see problems in segments. Picard looked at the big picture. Koon could set his work aside at the end of the day. Picard took his back to his quarters. Koon took things personally. Picard was aloof. Koon was a man of contemporary tastes. Picard was a man of the classics. Koon enjoyed a good story. Picard delighted in verse. Koon had a shaky history with women. Picard was a ladies man.

Another difference soon resolved into common ground before they parted ways. Picard extolled the virtues of wine, while Koon preferred beer. Picard insisted that Koon sit down and drink a bottle of Picard's family label with him while Jean-Luc told stories from the vineyard. Koon left the table both inebriated and convinced Picard's wine to be the finest around.

After the meeting, Koon brought a bottle to the officer who had suggested it. She sat down with him and helped him drink it while he told her about his encounter with his rival. That day she became his trusted friend. Two years later she married him.

Koon never saw Picard again. Though they occasionally corresponded, their careers managed to separate them. But the affect of the meeting was striking. Before the two met, Koon was on a self-destructive course. Now relieved of a huge grudge, he felt out his own style of command without the distraction of trying to remain visible.

In the end each man wound up with prime assignments at about the same time. While Picard got the flagship of the fleet, Koon got another new ship and a much longer mission. In a way the tides were turned on them. Koon got _Pioneer_ and a deep space mission. In effect: the tip of the spear. Picard got the _Enterprise_ and became the principle troubleshooter for the Federation.

In another way each was ill suited to his appointed task. Picard had no close family, but he remained relatively close to Earth. Koon had a wife, herself the Captain of the _U.S.S. Endeavor_, and two daughters he was forced to leave indefinitely.

But before all that, he still considered himself a pilot of exceptional excellence. He could squeeze a ship even as bulky as_ Pioneer_ into a class two space dock without scratching the paint. Before he left, Jean-Luc sent him a letter where, among other things, he speculated about dogfighting the _Enterprise _against the _Pioneer_ to settle who the better pilot was. Koon knew the joke well. Many of his graduating class sided with Picard's sentiments only much more urgently. His friends and colleagues were trained to be curious and finding out who was the best pilot was an irresistible topic. It was only natural for everyone to desire a showdown. In his day he'd been the best, but no contest had granted the title, only professional consent. The final, clinching proof was not there to be seen though, and it was with mutual reluctance that the two Captains never saw each other again.

So far the command of _Pioneer_ lacked any excitement. With the exception of what Koon called "house keeping" his mettle had remained untested until the _Lassen's Cutoff_ smashed through the ship. Until then the mission greatly resembled his former life before he met Picard, filled with unglamorous, numbing drudgery that might have broken another man by the sheer tedium of the chore.

But now he was riding a sub-space flare, on a ship only half put together, with an exhausted crew, and no safe place to shelter. In another sense, this test should have broken him, but Captain Peyter Koon was just thrilled… No _honored_ to be here with the people he knew so well. His pride in them swelled in his chest as he watched them fly through crisis after crisis almost without his attention, much less help. Watching Lieutenant Forte fly _Pioneer _like a demon, Lieutenant Kree navigate unerringly yet blind, Lieutenant Locke shoot like a bandit, and Chief Gordon nursing the engines like a doting parent assured Koon that he had the finest crew ever assembled. In no small part he felt privileged to be here. It filled his spirit to overflowing.

"Willie, how far do we have to go?" Koon asked.

The science officer hesitated before he answered. Unlike anyone else aboard he was monitoring the overall path of the Flare. Totem and Spaulding were focused on the warp field and how to make it conform to their theoretical model. Kree and Forte were limited to the path directly ahead. So it was up to him to fuse the theories of science into the path they had to travel. And that path right now was snapping about like the tip of a whip. Any estimate of where or when this would be over was still very fluid. "Soon, sir," he said.

Koon was surprised. Willie was a precise man, and didn't speak in vagaries often. That indicated an uncertain mind, which always meant an uncertain outcome. To his right Commander Okuma bristled in preparation to chastise Willie for this, but Koon held up his hand. Turning to her he murmured, "Don't distract him. I shouldn't have asked in the first place."

Okuma glared at him for a moment, then nodded agreement. She looked tired enough to roll her eyes up and sleep for days, but her mind tenaciously continued to reason. If this wasn't so important, he would have ordered her to sleep where she sat.

"Final IP in ten seconds," Willie announced. Somewhere on the bridge a nervous cheer arose, but it was brief.

The final Initial Point had been intended as a harsh turn out to space, but it didn't turn out that way. The idea had been to turn away from the Flare and allow it to descend into the Great Barrier while _Pioneer_ remained a safe distance away. Well intended, but ultimately flawed. The greatest amount of energy in the form of inertia, momentum, and quantum drive was at the tip of the Flare. _Pioneer_ lacked the resources to stop or disperse that energy, but she could draw and bend it. She could even harvest it had her crew had the time to fathom the concept, but for now she would have to draw the Flare across the Great Barrier rather than plunge it directly into it. That meant that they would have to fly very close to the surface of the Great Barrier at their current speed. There was no telling what the energies would do at the moment of impact, but it meant that the IP was turned into a gentle curve rater than an abrupt about face.

It was almost too good to be true.

Lieutenant Tania Shin monitored the Com array with increasing frustration. Hers was a job almost obsolete in Starfleet. Rumor had it that _Galaxy_-class ships had done away with her job altogether and given it over to the security or duty officer. But _Pioneer _was just a little behind the trend in this regard. So she sat at her station dutifully and uselessly in shift after shift of nothing.

Now was no exception. While everyone else was frantically busy, she had nothing to do. Their sub-space array had been repaired, but any communication from Earth would take months to receive. It made for slow dammed days, and a feeling of hopelessness in a crisis.

_What's that?_

Flashing across her screen was the undeniable signs of a sub-space transmission. Two of them in short bursts tickled the array, but passed on by. The transmission was not for them. But who was it for? For the last six years Shin had only received the scheduled reports form Starfleet, and this was no time for one of those. Was it an emergency call? Was it Starfleet?

Checking the data logs, she examined the transmissions in detail. The signature was neither Starfleet, she found out, nor was the source Earth or any Starfleet outpost. Tracing the path of the transmission, she found it on a line almost perpendicular to the Federation… strange. She almost brushed it aside so she could examine it in greater detail after the business with the Flare was over, but the second transmission stopped her. Both transmissions were low power and faint, but the second one's line of sight ran out of the Great Barrier. _What the hell?_

"Captain, I have something…" she paused a moment searching for an adequate word, "strange."

Koon turned to Okuma, "Go check on it."

Okuma, already wound up, bolted from her seat. In a heartbeat she was at Shin's side. "What do you have?" she asked quietly. Not wanting to distract the others any more that she had to she resolved to hunch conspirator like over Shin.

Shin told Okuma what she knew while she displayed the data.

Okuma thought for a moment, a slow process after all lost nights of sleep, then told Shin to cross-link her data with their projected flight path.

Shin downloaded their course from Kree's station and overlaid it with the path of the transmissions. "You see, they go past us, but not at us, Commander. I'm not sure if I'm being paranoid, but I thought you should see this."

"You think it's a threat?" Okuma asked.

"This is the kind of thing we would do to mask our transmissions at the procedural level," Shin answered. "Burst transmissions, in code, around or away from an enemy," she elaborated ticking off her points on her fingers. "The best way to keep communications secure is for the enemy not to receive them at all."

"But who would be out here? Could it be for us?" Okuma asked. She spoke distantly, speculating aloud and mirroring Shin's own concerns. After another second she slapped the consol and declared, "I won't risk it. Expand the view. Let's see were the sources are."

Shin did so. When the two women saw the second transmission's source out of the Great Barrier, they knew _Pioneer _was in trouble.

Okuma spun around and barked, "Shields up full!"

Hurst almost fell out of his chair, "No, wait!"

Speer did as he was told and raised the shields. It was both too late and too soon. Almost at the same time he raised them, an intruder alert sounded on his consol. Meanwhile the shields combined with the warp field caused an energy cascade just like the one _Lassen's Cutoff_ triggered six weeks ago. An enormous wave erupted out of the Great Barrier like a tidal wave, but unlike the Flare this wave rushed across the surface of the Great Barrier rather than away from it.

Behind _Pioneer_ the rooster tail spiked a hundredfold higher then crashed down again in a broad, rolling avalanche chasing the ship. The new wave drained energy from the Flare, and in a few seconds the wave consumed what was left of the Flare directly above the ship.

Totem and Spaulding began frantically jabbering and hammered the controls to the warp engines in tandem. Hurst keyed in a new path for Kree, but she ignored it. Forte noticed his controls amplifying his commands and the speed edging towards the fatal warp 10 then hover there only .00018 from realizing it. Everyone was busy now, but the ship was holding.

"Intruder alert!" Speer announced. He was surprised to say the least. In seven years he had never saw the intruder alert sound unless during a drill. Now five decks were positively screaming for security teams. Com badges were being put on emergency beacon, the cue for transporters to beam personnel directly to sic bay. Six, no seven, beacons flashed on in five seconds. The newly restored transporters could only handle one at a time as it was. What had just happened? "Decks five through ten, Captain, report alien humanoids firing disruptor weapons," he said.

Koon took this shocking news with surprising calm. "Are they dealing with them, or do we need to reinforce them?" he asked casually.

"We have seven, no nine, emergency Com badge markers set off, Captain. Request permission to leave the bridge and reinforce my men."

"Granted," Koon said calmly. "Lieutenant Shin, take over the security station."

"Aye, sir," Shin said and changed the mode of her station from communications to security.

Speer bolted from the bridge with his phaser drawn.

"Incoming!" Locke shouted. _Pioneer _bucked like a derailed train a second later.

"Return fire," Koon barked. "If warheads are coming this way target them instead of the ship that's firing. We can't take a beating like this. Weapons free."

Locke thought that was surprisingly sensible since it worked out in her favor. The phaser banks were heavily damaged and depleted from the shot she had taken at the asteroid in their path and the beating the Flare had given them. Any large target would consume the capacitors in only a shot or two. But warheads like photon torpedoes, plasma warheads, or anything else like those were seldom shielded and predisposed to be touchy. In five tidy shots, she destroyed just as many warheads. If this kept up she could fend off their attackers for hours if necessary.

Koon turned to Forte and Kree, "Can you two keep us going?"

Without taking their attention from their stations they answered in unison, "Aye, sir."

"Good. Keep us running as fast as you can." Koon spun around and barked, "Locke! Where's that ship that's firing on us?"

"Running along our port side, sir," she answered.

"Can we return torpedo fire?"

"No, sir, torpedo bay two is destroyed, and the forward bay is inoperable."

"Then we'll have to outrun them. Hurst, Totem, Spaulding, can you keep us going this fast?"

The two scientists stopped gabbing for a second to consider this while Willie stared at his station readout. Spaulding answered with a blunt, dry authority, "Without a doubt, sir."

"We have no choice, Captain," Totem added.

"The rooster tail will crush us if we don't," Hurst concluded.

Had the three men not spoken with three separate voices, the cadence and tone of their answer could have spoken from a single mind.

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On the lower decks, Speer raced along the corridors towards the fighting. "Security team two, I'm approaching your position."

As if in reply a loud _brrrraap_ thundered down the corridor with the concussive pressure of a sonic boom. The wind whooshed out of his lungs and he was knocked off his feet. A flash of blue light strobed his vision followed by the familiar whirring hiss of phaser fire in his ears.

His com badge squawked to life, "Shin to Speer."

He slapped his badge, "Speer," he croaked breathless.

"I've located all the intruders, and isolated them in security fields, but a few crewmen are trapped in with them," she reported.

"Very well," Speer said regaining his feet. "I'll take a team into each area and further isolate the intruders. We may be able to save a few of our people that way. For now isolate the security controls to the bridge unless I give the authority."

"Understood," Shin replied.

Rounding a curve, he tripped over a dead crewman and went sprawling to the deck.

_Brrrraap!_

At this range the blue strobe blinded him while the sound of the weapon made his ears ring. He had the vague notion he was screaming, but he could no longer hear himself. The shot which should have killed him passed over his head. Two loud, nasal hums, barely audible over his ringing ears, told him that someone was beating on the security field a few meters away. Recovering from his fall, Speer rolled into a nearby doorway before another shot followed him along the floor.

Tapping his com badge, he shouted into the air, "Raise section C45E5 and drop C35E5."

Clearly whatever he had just avoided was trapped inside the field, but was spraying wild shots all over the ship. The last shot had come through a force ten security field without question. His own phaser couldn't do that, so in order to take a shot he had to trap himself in with the intruders. Otherwise the intruder could kill whoever passed by in relative safety while causing who knows what kind of damage to the ship.

Shin did as she was told, but kept Speer's com line open.

Fortunately for Speer, the intruder was hammering the force field with all his weight. When the field dropped, the Hirogen overbalanced for a split second. Speer ducked around the corner in time to see his attacker, and fired a shot. Though set to kill, the Hirogen only staggered from the blow. Speer fired again. A shot from another phaser joined his followed by a third. Finally the Hirogen dropped.

An uneasy silence blanketed the corridor. Slowly, almost timidly, Speer and the two other security personnel emerged from their cover. Crouching they approached the body of the dead intruder.

Speer recognized the two men. Case and Moritz were their names. But Speer had never seen either so rattled. Their eyes wide, their teeth bared in predatory sneers they looked crazed, on the verge of hysteria. Then it dawned on him that he was clenching his own teeth hard enough to pain his jaw. With a force of will he relaxed his emotions enough to take in what he saw. "There are more of them, men, we need to clear them out," he said calmly.

Then something strange happened. Case bent down and fired his phaser point blank into the intruder's head. Moritz took a shot before Speer swatted their phasers out of their hands.

Shocked Speer only stood there a second gaping at the two men.

Finally Moritz said, "It took fifteen shots on full kill to drop him, sir," his voice wavering with emotion. "Forgive us if we're a little…" he trailed off.

Speer kicked the weapon out of reach of the alien. "Fill me in on how to drop them on the way down to the next deck."

A security team made up of spare crewmen nosed cautiously around the corner. "Is it clear?" a woman's voice asked.

Speer realized that his com badge was open and Shin was trying to talk to him. "Deck five clear," he said. "Shin, let us out of here then lock down this section until I can come back to investigate the body."

Sounding relived Shin replied, "Aye, sir."

Trotting down the corridor to the next turbolift, he asked Case and Moritz, "Can you two get a grip long enough to finish these guys?"

Case answered with, "Hell, yes!"

Had Speer not been so concerned with Case's and Moritz's state of mind he might have noticed his own. For instance, the throbbing pain on the side of his skull he was ignoring. Also left to oblivion was the fact that his right eye was blind, burned to a crisp by the Hirogen weapon. Form his shoulder to his wrist as well as about of third of his skull was beginning to blister with serious burns. Faintly he noticed his uniform crackle under the motion of his swinging arm, and distantly he noticed a dull ache along his right side. But he was so intent on his task that he never noticed the air breezing over his bare scalp, or his muscles begin to tighten under the shock of second and third degree burns. For now he just didn't have the time.


	3. A Clash of Strangers

Woe is the lot of those who miscalculate. Of the ten hunters who beamed aboard, all but three were lost in airless rooms _Pioneer's _crew had yet to repair. While they were prepared for this eventuality, they were not prepared to be sealed off in dark voids of the rooms they appeared in. After a few minutes of poking and prodding about the bulkheads almost all of them began blasting away with their heaviest firepower. One hunter blew himself to pieces when the explosion of his polaric grenade failed to breach the security fields. Another managed to blow his way outside the ship with his gravon rifle only to be killed when he fell off the hull and into the rooster tail. Two managed to link up by blowing out the deck between them and overloading the security field emitters, but there they found that the concussion from the resulting overload had crushed their environmental gear. They only managed to seal themselves in the galley before they frantically began to doff their gear before it suffocated them. When the security teams arrived, they were outnumbered and completely surprised. Not willing to give up so easily they fought and lost under an avalanche of phaser fire. The remaining six found themselves isolated and lost in a maze of pitch black, airless rooms and corridors. But being hunters they were still of a mind to pursue their prey, and all three had the gear with them to track the crew of this confounded ship.

Heartstock scanned the absolute black night he found himself in carefully. After a careful study of his footing, he retrieved his marvel, and scanned the room with it. So named since that is what almost anyone did when one studied it or used it, the Hirogen Marvel was the hand-held equivalent to all the complicated sensors aboard his own vessel. It told him everything. From the shape of the room, to the properties of the walls, from the size and shape of his prey, to their individual pulse rates and EKG readings, the Marvel missed nothing. In fact, if the marvel had a problem it was presenting too much information to process by a single mind in an orderly fashion. Tuning out what he considered useless info, Heartstock made his way to the nearest bulkhead. Through his suit's gauntlet he gently caressed the metal. It was thin. Better yet it was bent and unnaturally distorted. In a single smooth motion Heartstock hooked a magnetic concussion grenade from his belt and slapped it on the weakened bulkhead.

Since no air was about to transfer the shock to his body, he stepped back only a single pace and let the device activate. The results were impressive. The metal seemed to boil and froth with waves as if liquefied. Unable to stand the onslaught any more, the bulkhead turned to powder in under two seconds and fell to the deck like sifting sand.

The next room was lit by intensely bright lights, but no air and no one lay inside. Confidently Heartstock stepped into the room and surveyed it. It was a tidy space of smooth contours and pleasant colors. The presence of a cot and what had to be a small privy confirmed his suspicions that this was a crewman's quarters. Wanting to know more about his prey, the master hunter took another step into the room for a closer look.

When the security field shimmered to life behind him, he knew he had made an error. Whether or not that error was fatal was yet to be seen. Experimentally he tapped the surface of the field with the muzzle of his gravon rifle. It didn't budge, but it didn't harm his weapon either. _Foolish configuration for a trap_, the hunter in him mused. A simple closed box like this one offered time to both trapper and snared. A potential trophy could batter itself to pieces before someone cam along to claim it. Likewise it offered the opportunity for the trapped prey to find a way out while still fully armed. Hirogen traps were designed to disarm and stun their prey. Some more elaborate ones went so far as to be gene, or even individually, specific; allowing Hirogen hunters to snare the precise prey in mind.

_But this one, _Heartstock thought in professional exasperation_, this will be the ruin of any serious hunter!_ And he had every intention of proving it. He viewed it on his marvel and noted the level of type of energy being used. After a moment's hesitation, he slid a magnetic mine across the floor and activated his personal blind.

The blind was a energy sink that didn't quite make him invisible, but made him appear as a dim shadow to the naked eye. Another upshot of this device was it absorbed all ambient energies from the outside. In such a capacity, it absorbed weapons fire until the buffers had to vent. If allowed to absorb enough energy, the device would explode on his belt, but Heartstock knew he had little to fear from what he had in mind.

The magnetic mine began to distort the plates of the floor and, much to Heartstock's satisfaction, the resulting tug on the metal began to distort the floor and even the walls beyond the field. Before long the metal plates under his feet were liquefied into a plastic goop that stuck to his boots and fluoresced a dirty blue. The magnetic mine's effect traveled along the metal plates of the ship until a section of the strangers' ship the size of a standard shuttle was affected. Bulkheads collapsed like burning boxes, floor plates caved in under their own weight, the mounts for the recently restrung plasma conduits pulled out of the structural bulkheads and broke apart with a sound like lightning strikes. Once the plasma hit the atmosphere of the sealed off room, it ionized every molecule in sight. A bright, concussive blast of raw static flashed through the space before the safety valves further up the power grid shut off the area with a loud _bang_ like a flat surface hitting a large area of water.

Anyone unfortunate enough to be in the room with Heartstock would have been melted by the sudden flash of heat from the blast, and then reduced to gobbets by the concussion. But behind the safety of the security field, he remained as secure as in his home. The bright flash dazzled him for a moment, but his vision cleared soon enough. The trap around him collapsed as the power grid tore itself apart in this room and power to the emitters first fluctuated then failed altogether.

The room around him had been reduced to gelatin then blown out to the extent of the mine's influence. A huge cavern of blackened metal replaced the once modest living quarters of the ship. When Heartstock pushed on one of the walls, it parted like so much paper exposing the darkened interior of the corridor beyond. Eager to find prey before they could recover from this blow, he checked his blind, and discovered almost no affect on the buffers. The trap had protected him from the worst of the blast and flash. _How fortunate!_ He thought as he stalked down the corridor.

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Speer reached engineering in the midst of a vicious fight. Phasers hissed and he could hear the _brrrap brrap_ of the alien's weapons in a deafening crescendo. Never before had he heard such a relentless exchange of fire. Not even on a target range with a dozen students practicing with live fire. Accustomed to irregular phaser bursts between attacking fire, what he heard now was a hammering din of a hundred men desperately firing away. As he approached, he could see vital ship's systems pulverized to ruined fragments of high technology all around him. When he rounded a corner at a dead run, he managed to witness five crewmen blow a hole through a console the size of a hangar door while they huddled behind rubble they had stacked in front of them.

An orange flash followed by a man cart-wheeling backwards from the makeshift barricade announced that their opponents had no regard for the ship either. He had run into a full-tilt inferno not a fight.

A hand grabbed him and yanked him back around the corner before he could look around it to see what he was facing. Looking to see who it was, Speer saw the blacked face of Commander Gordon staring at him like a man divorced of his senses. The eyes were wide and frenzied, the mouth was split into an animal like grin of aggression and panic, and Gordon's entire frame shook like a flag in a high wind.

The voice that shouted over the din was dry and crazed, but the words were remarkably cognizant. "They blew out the security field emitters just before you arrived," Gordon screamed at Speer. "I've got to keep them from reaching the core!"

"How many are there?" Speer demanded.

"Two!" Gordon barked before he darted around the corner to empty a phaser at the unseen attackers. An instant later he rounded the corner, snatched Speer's phaser out of his hand, and darted around the corner again.

Case and Moritz slipped beside Speer and were about to offer him one of their phasers, when Gordon darted around the corner again and snatched both out of their hands as neatly as if he were plucking dandelions. He dashed back into the fight again leaving the three security officers defenseless in the corridor.

The three men stared at each other not knowing what to do about the current situation. Never before in all their years at arms had anyone plucked their phasers out of their hands before they had a chance to use them, and it took a moment to realize how to proceed. Case could only observe, "He's good at that," before his mind could churn into gear again.

Moritz had the presence of mind to tap his com badge a heartbeat later. "Moritz to armory!" he shouted.

"Armory, aye," came the prompt reply.

"Beam three phaser rifles and six security-grade phasers to my position on Lieutenant-Commander Speer's authorization!" Moritz ordered.

"I need…" the armory officer began but was interrupted by Speer himself.

"This is Speer," he shouted into Moritz's com badge. "And double all of that _now!_" The weapons materialized three seconds later.

Speer slung one rifle over his shoulder while he cradled another in his hands. "You two," he barked at Case and Moritz, "pass out fresh weapons to the men out there."

Gordon emerged around the corner again and flattened himself against the bulkhead next to Speer. "This is gonna' hurt!" he shouted just before a deafening _boom_ thundered through the ship. Speer's ears immediately began to ring like a church bell. He clapped his hands over them, but the idiot note of total sonic overload rang without mercy in his head. He barely noticed Gordon snatch up two phasers from their fresh supply and dart around the corner again.

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"What the hell was that?" Okuma shouted at Lieutenant Shin as _Pioneer_ shuddered like a tuning fork.

Doing double duty as security team coordinator and monitoring the ship's status, Shin watched a dozen warnings appear in an instant with panic inducing insistence. "The Impulse auxiliary unit in main engineering just overloaded!" Shin managed not to scream. "We have structural failure on the sub-deck 2 of engineering."

As if to confirm her claim, a moaning screech of tortured metal, like the sound of ship hulls imploding while sinking at sea, howled through the bridge. A crunching, grinding sound followed it a moment later.

"I've lost the impulse drive," Forte reported. "The entire consol just went dead."

"Keep us going at warp, Lieutenant," Koon said calmly. He turned to Spaulding and Totem to ask them if their control was damaged, but decided their continued stream of babble meant it wasn't or they were working on it. Satisfied, he brought up a tactical display on his command display and watched the exchange between the alien ship and _Pioneer._ "Locke," he announced, "I want a torpedo shot into the barrier adjacent to that ship."

"The launcher is jammed, Captain," Locke reported, "I tried that a minute ago."

Koon thought about it for an instant then it dawned on him. "Drop a full spread of mines on my mark! Forte, change your heading hard to starboard!"

_Pioneer _veeredgracefully to starboard directly into the pursuing ship. The Rooster Tail behind her followed her in her turn. Koon might have worried about raising an uncontrollable flare of unimagined size, but he reasoned he had to survive to worry about that. He needn't have worried at all. The Rooster Tail rose a few thousand kilometers above the surface of the Great Barrier before it lost its deadly density, dispersed and sunk back to the churning cauldron of slow fusion fires below. The Rooster Tail turned out to be quite narrow compared to the stem of the Flare. About thirty kilometers wide at the head, it was drawn to the shields which acted like an area of low pressure behind the ship that drew the head of the Rooster Tail into the ship. By keeping ahead of it at top warp _Pioneer_ was barely avoiding serious power failure as an exponential amount of material would abrade the shields down to nothing and overload the main deflector.

The hunter ship raced alongside the Rooster Tail off to _Pioneer's _starboard side. When Koon ordered the hard turn, what resembled a wall of dangerous material to hit at high warp, tuned into a corner the hunters risked running in to. With thousands of kilometers of Rooster Tail above them, the hunters were forced to climb away from the barrier to gain some maneuvering space, and turn with their prey to starboard.

"Drop the mines in one… two… mark!" Koon ordered.

Locke obeyed and a dozen mines tumbled into the Rooster Tail and were crushed. "They failed to arm!" she reported. As a weapons expert, she knew mines were a risky business to drop at any warp. Once they dropped out of the subspace field, they tended to retain immense inertia that overwhelmed the fuses, as such they tended to damage the most aft part of the warp nacelles in a close explosion. With this in mind, she had set the fuses to arm only after they had dropped out of the subspace bubble around the ship.

"Set to standard fusing and drop another spread _now!_" Koon ordered.

"But…" Locke protested.

"_NOW!_" Koon shouted.

Locke obeyed and the mines tumbled out of the ship. These exploded less than a kilometer away from the ship, but the explosion slipped behind them before it could do any damage. _Pioneer_ shuddered slightly but raced onwards like a frightened zebra.

The affect on the Rooster Tail was impressive. The distortion created by having the mines explode in subspace while at the same time exploding in real space, caused the Rooster Tail to hit a wall of sorts. The energy of the explosion kept an opening into subspace for an instant, and the Rooster Tail rushed into the bubble to fill it past the saturation point. Since subspace cannot hold large quantities of energy in static balance, the bubble collapsed and dispersed its energies in real space. A huge ball of pure energy grew to a diameter of 20,000 kilometers before the energies reached equilibrium.

The Hirogen ship had no way to turn from it in time, while _Pioneer _raced directly away from it. The hunter ship smashed into the sphere and underwent an experience Koon and his crew knew all too well. The warp engines buckled, then shut down when the mass inside the subspace field reached 200 times the mass and 50 times the density of the ship. Massive pressure buckled the hull and snuffed out the Warp drive. Heat rivaling that of stars warped the keel of the Hirogen vessel. The tortured space around them, forced to bridge the gap between sister dimensions in nanoseconds caused what Federation engineers called "nucleic buckling:" the sudden and catastrophic breakdown of the very atoms that made up the alloys the ship was made of. Large sections of the hull broke down into useless isotopes as the very atoms that made up the ship stretched and broke apart. Finally inertia brought them out of the cloud, and the Hirogen ship, now a distorted hulk, drifted away like a speck of dust.

Koon breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that his scheme had worked beyond his best hopes. The Rooster tail had sprouted up behind them again, but he thought he had a cure for that. "Forte, Kree," he said calmly, "Pull away from the Barrier gently and find a place we can hide for repairs."

"Aye, sir," they said in unison.

_Pioneer_ gently pulled into empty space, and the Rooster Tail gradually lost the energy to follow her. Over the next few hours, the tail would settle back to the turbulent surface of the Great Barrier, and no one would have suspected it had ever been there.

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"Do you have a plan?" Speer shouted at Gordon when he thought he could hear the man again.

Eddie shook his head, "I just blew out the impulse buffers to block their path. If they can get through that mess, I've got nothing left to stop them."

Speer would have been astonished any other time to hear Eddie say that, but with the massive hail of fire still pounding through the engineering spaces, he was operating on an instinctive level only.

"They're holed up behind a partial field that's blocking all our fire," Eddie explained. "I've tried to blow out the emitters and the controls, but the system is on the other side of the field. They can shoot right through it, but we've been trying to shoot around it."

"Can you get around their flank to land shots on them?" Speer shouted over the din of the fighting and his own ringing ears.

"They have a clear field of fire in that direction," Eddie said.

Speer peaked around the corner and caught a glimpse of the fight. About thirty meters away shimmered a security field under heavy bombardment from phaser fire. Rubble littered the floor in every direction, and bodies of dead crewmen lay fanned out from the aliens' stronghold. He thought he saw the field waver for an instant, but watched it doggedly resist the onslaught. After a moment, he saw the point where the field ended and a clear shot could be obtained. Off to the right of the field, he could see some shots land on the far wall rather than the field. From that angle, the aliens would be wide open. A bulkhead prevented him from seeing the aliens directly, but he could guess what was there. Two powerfully built aliens crouching behind a shield barely wide enough for the two of them.

"Koon to Speer," Speer's com badge squawked.

Speer tapped the badge and barked out a toneless, "Aye!"

"What do you need down there?" Koon asked.

"Give me a little time," Speer replied and tapped his badge again. "Speer to Shin."

"Go ahead," Shin replied.

"Shut down all security fields in engineering," Speer ordered.

Shin obeyed, but the field in front of the two aliens remained stubbornly solid.

Speer was about to repeat his order when Gordon mused, "The control links must be a mess by now." He turned to Speer and announced, "We'll have to destroy the emitters on the other side of the room."

Exasperated, Speer grabbed Gordon by the shoulder and pinned him against the bulkhead. "Stay here!" he barked. Turning to Case and Moritz he ordered, "Standard assault by the right flank."

Case and Moritz peeked around the corner that shielded them from the ongoing battle one at a time. While Moritz was looking around the corner, he suddenly went rigid then fell dead to the floor along with a sizable chunk of the wall.

Speer and Case took a glance at the dead man, then charged into the battle firing their phaser rifles. The loud _brrrap brrrap _of the alien weapons fully deafened them to the chaos all around them. On legs made fleet with terror and outrage, the two men raced across the deadly field of fire between the intruders and the battling engineers scattered about the deck. One of Speer's legs was beginning to stiffen seriously by now, so Case darted past him in four bounding strides. It was a foolhardy and suicidal tactic that should have killed them, but as luck would have it the engineers were so shocked to see the two racing across their field of fire that they stopped shooting all at once.

In the next few seconds the room seemed to shrink as the cacophony of phaser fire shut down as if from a switch. The two aliens couldn't help but notice the sudden change and scanned their surroundings for an instant to check what had happened. That instant was just long enough for Case to round the edge of the security field and fire a shot that knocked a leg out from under one of the aliens. The wounded alien fell back against his companion and fired a wild shot at Case that almost took his head off, but instead burned his left arm almost completely off.

Speer rounded the extremity of the shield and fired wildly at the two aliens. In a blind rage he sprayed the area behind the shield with shots and managed to land another shot on the already wounded one and keeping the uninjured one from returning fire. Seeing a brief chance opening up, the engineers charged the intruders firing wildly at a dead run. The remaining intruder was smothered in phaser fire almost to the point of ash.

When it was over, a vast quiet fell over the deck that belied the frenzied minds of the men aware of it. The engineers stood in wide eyed, ear ringing silence, stunned by the events of the last few minutes. Some slouched in postures of complete exhaustion, while others shook with nervous energy. All faced the bodies of the aliens as if expecting them to stand and fight again.

Speer let the phaser rifle hang from its strap while he struggled to collect his thoughts. Slowly his body began to inform his racing mind of tremendous pain along his left side.

Case stared at the two dead aliens with a blank expression for a long time. Then without changing that expression one bit, he marched forward and fired two point-blank shots into each of the intruders' heads. "Done," he sighed then sunk to the floor as the shock from his ruined arm took him.

Speer tapped his com badge again. In a calm, toneless voice he said, "Speer to the Captain, engineering clear. Request emergency transport directly to sic bay for… for…" he looked around at the scattered bodies around the deck and suddenly felt confused as what he should do with them. Pain began to fill his mind and sap his concentration. His burned arm and leg suddenly felt aflame and swollen to impossible proportions. One side of his head felt somehow heavier than the other, and it took an act of will to keep it level with his shoulders. All of this information began to drown out his thoughts in a primal sea of agony. He never noticed Gordon bark out the orders to have him sent to sic bay. By the time he materialized in front of the doctor, Speer had passed out.

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"How bad is it, Eddie?" Koon asked.

Gordon sounded close to tears, "The Warp core is in tact, but almost everything else is wrecked. I think I can give you maneuvering thrusters, but a complete rebuild of the impulse drive will have to be undertaken before I can fire it up."

"What happened down there?" Koon asked.

"They materialized right in front of the main diagnostic panel and shot everyone in sight, Captain," Gordon explained. His voice betrayed a tremor of emotion as his nerves cooled and the loss of his people set in. "I've lost six people at least, maybe more."

"I'll try to find a quiet place to repair the damage, Chief," Koon promised. "I'll have to ask you keep the Warp core running a while longer."

"Aye, sir," Gordon replied sounding drained. "I'll keep you informed of any trouble." The com went dead without Eddie signing off.

Koon turned to Lieutenant Shin. "Any more aboard?"

"Unsure right now, sir," Shin replied. "We have reports coming in from every deck filling the com channels reporting damage. Sensor logs indicate at least ten of those aliens beamed aboard, but we can only account for seven."

"Everybody pair up. Nobody travels alone anywhere in the ship until we're sure the ship is secure," Koon ordered. Turning to Okuma he assumed a quieter tone. "Compile a detailed list of damage and get started on any system that threatens the basic safety of the crew. I want people to get some rest in a few hours at least. Maintain red alert until the ship is declared clear, then stand down to an engineering alert."

These orders struck Okuma as somewhat foolish. An engineering alert wasn't even a yellow alert in terms of readiness. Unlike yellow alerts that commanded all crewmen man their stations in preparation for a threat, engineering alerts split the crew up into their watches and were intended as a form of ship wide diagnostic. Crewmen were instructed to start in their quarters and move to their work stations in the search for breakage. Repair teams were to organize by sections and in shifts. Under ordinary circumstances, such alerts were the tools of tyrannical Captains as a kind of prolonged drill. Called "white glove alerts" throughout the fleer, the kind of Captains that used an engineering alert were thought of as perfectionist tightwads trying to shave time from the private lives of crewmen. But in this case she could see the sense of it. The ship was still underway, the damage they had sustained over the last hour was largely uncataloged, and after the last few weeks of frantic work merely to survive the crew approached the threshold of complete exhaustion. While the work repairing the ship could not stop, especially now, a measured response to it could allow them to sort out a strategy to apply the energies of the crew.

Lieutenant Shin drew her attention again, "Sir, engineering reports they've discovered the bodies of two more aliens."

"Was there a fight?" Okuma asked.

"No, sir," Shin replied. "They were caught in the explosion of the impulse buffers." She paused a moment before adding, "Apparently there's not much left of them."

"That makes for how many?" Koon asked.

"Six," Okuma told him.

"Make that eight," Shin said. "The galley just reported taking down two more."

"Casualties?" Koon asked.

"Fifty-five in sic bay with more coming in," Shin said. "Eighteen confirmed dead."

Okuma froze in horror at the figure. On a ship as close-nit as _Pioneer,_ the initial loss of a dozen crewmen a few weeks ago had been bearable only by the need to survive. Now more were added to the tally, and she knew this was a career-breaking figure. No peacetime ship had lost half so many people in over seventy years.

Koon remained outwardly unmoved and practical, "Are there any in danger right now?"

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In fact there were. Hidden away in the darkened corridors between the crew's quarters, an alien hunter stalked silently, and almost invisibly, the prey he had so lusted after. Although he did not know it, Heartstock was alone on _Pioneer._ Also unknown to Heartstock he was being tracked by another predator.

Lieutenant M'rath was an unlikely candidate to take on a Hirogen hunter. Short, spare, and dispassionate the crewman had a scholarly demeanor and a history of avoiding confrontation of any kind.

But there was more to the man than the crew understood. Although he was registered as a Vulcan in the crew manifest, he was in fact a Romulan mole. Born on Earth to Romulan agents posing as a Vulcan couple, he had been raised to revere his heritage while maintaining the outward demeanor of his parent's cover. His parents had told him the grand history of Romulus, and instilled in their son a true desire to serve it.

Romulans, he was told, are passionate yet filled with purpose. They would go to war, but only on precise, measured terms that they could dictate. They focused their energies with the same discipline Vulcans used to conquer their emotions, but with the full blooded passions that had overwhelmed their enemies for millennia.

M'rath may have been short, but he hid a powerful frame. He may have been light, but he was obscenely agile. He may have been scholarly, but his life as a mole had sharpened his objectivity to a fine point.

And it was this last part that troubled him now. Not his strength, not his fighting skills, but his cover; his all-important cover he had nurtured and maintained for his entire life could be permanently damaged by acting against this interloper in any way. A display of his fighting skills would raise questions he would be uncomfortable answering. An action taken in an effort to preserve the lives of a Starfleet crew would raise an eyebrow or two from his Romulan masters once they found out. On the offhand chance he did not survive the encounter with the stranger, a detailed look into his past would raise questions he would be unable to deflect from either sic bay or the grave.

On the other hand, how could he allow this interloper harm his fellow crewmen? As part of his deep cover he had as fully integrated himself into the crew as any other officer, and his present duty was clear. He had friends aboard, good friends he cared for no matter whom his ultimate allegiance went to. How could he allow them to come to harm and face a mirror the next day? How could he face his superiors on the day he returned to the splendid peaks of Romulus?

_I have to get home to worry about the Tal' Shiar',_ his acquired Vulcan logic reasoned. _I must get home to confront the Tal' Shiar',_ his Romulan character added. Either way he saw no long-term compromise to the short-term dilemma in front of him. As the human philosopher Machiavelli had surmised: it wasn't how things happened, it was how things are received that dictated action. If he failed to act before the intruder did something to the crew, he would be labeled a coward. If he took this alien down, he would draw attention to himself.

Unwanted attention was the real hub of the matter. Keeping his calm, dispassionate demeanor over the last six weeks was nothing short of impossible. With emotions running at an all time high after literally years of bland day-to-day routine had fried his nerves and those of the crew. Working almost non-stop for six weeks, under intense pressure, with the threat of imminent death around every corner of the ship would frazzle the most stoic of men let alone Romulans. Indeed, two weeks ago he had knocked his work partner senseless with a Vulcan neck pinch when a panic attack overcame the man. No sooner had he done it than he regretted it. Impatience was not a Vulcan hallmark, and at the time he had expected an immediate investigation. Fortunately his lost temper was met with chagrin by Lieutenant-Commander Gordon and Commander Okuma, and the incident had gone into the grapevine as a dark joke instead of into his file under an assault. Taking on the intruder would add fuel to suspicions if he had to answer for it.

Adding confusion to the mix was his partner aboard _Pioneer_. If he exposed himself to an inquiry, then Tynee would come under suspicion, and he didn't want that either though he wanted to defend her more out of duty to Romulus than any personal attachment currently.

Tynee and M'rath had grown up together, trained together , gone to the Academy together, taken their leisure time together, and ultimately been assigned together aboard _Pioneer_. It went without saying this was far from an accident. Tynee's parents were operatives from the Tal' Shiar' as well, and the two of them long suspected their destinies, right back to their separate conceptions, had been decreed by Romulus. One of M'rath's parents partners had been discovered frequenting the home of a human woman where he had struck up a passionate affair. Since his cover was that of a Vulcan citizen, Starfleet Counterintelligence had managed to expose a sizeable fraction of the Tal' Shiar' network on Earth as a result. The countermeasure against another operative being exposed by his overbearing passions was to send couples to act as the most private of safety valves for one another. Since children only improved the deep cover of their operatives, it made sense to pair up the offspring in a similar manner to keep their secret insulated against the Federation snoopers.

In the beginning it seemed more than fair to have Tynee as his mate, but the marathon session of cohabitation over the last seven years had worn affections thin. M'rath suspected Tynee was tired of him. He knew she had become tedious to his sensibilities. Their arguments had grown from chilly disagreements to frenzied and hushed shouting matches. It was only a matter of time before one of them broke cover in front of the crew.

Be that as it may, he _did not _want to break cover under any circumstances. M'rath had invested his entire life into his potential service to his unseen masters. If that meant committing the vast majority of his active service to the Federation, that was a frustrating conundrum he was willing to bear. He had and furthermore was willing to utilize his every fiber in the service of his master's enemies until the day those distant, and so far silent, masters called him to rise against Starfleet. If that meant he had to lie, cheat, and murder close friends within the Federation, then so be it. His hopes and desires came a far distant second to the schemes of Romulus. Most frustrating of all, he was willing to do so even without knowing the ultimate purpose in mind. Until that glorious day of release, he had to maintain cover, garner the trust of those about him, and wait for the order to complete his ultimate mission.

_Whatever that is,_ a disgusted, bitter part of his Romulan character thought. Ever since he could command language, the two things burned into his mind had been his mission, and a question: why? Age and maturity had only made these two opposed ideas more strident in arguing their individual cases.

_I must serve the Empire without question or hesitation_, the part of him that had been trained and disciplined from birth insisted.

_Why?_ The part of him that spoke so bitterly asked.

_I trust in the judgment of the Empire,_ his training patiently explained.

_Why?_ The bitter part of him asked again.

_The decisions of the Empire are good and just,_ he would reason.

_How are you sure?_

_I believe it in my bottommost fiber._

_Why?_

Over the years that one word had gained an implacable authority. _Why_ could send his ordered mind into an internal argument he could neither stop nor win. _Why_ could stir his emotions to the boiling point. _Why _could cast an ever lengthening shadow of doubt over his most cherished beliefs. _Why_ could frustrate, enrage, hinder, and goad him._ Why_ rattled his skull and made his teeth ring. It was only a supreme act of will that could sidestep _why_ and he doubted he could keep the ultimate confrontation from falling on his tortured mind.

His internal turmoil manifested in ever increasing frequency. During stressful times all the more so. He'd resorted to the Vulcan meditation he'd learned as part of his cover to combat the ongoing division in his thoughts, and while it did help, it was maddeningly flimsy. Logic and suppressed emotions held no small amount of appeal compared to the clamor his thoughts subjected him to without mercy.

Logic held its drawbacks though. Not the least of which was the conclusions logic led him to. Logic insisted not only was his mission never going to be activated, but he was blind to larger issues he had observed all his life. The Federation may be flawed, but they did make a diligent effort for justice. Romulus may be grand, but it was undeniably corrupt. Starfleet may be large and powerful, but it was not arrayed or designed to confront Romulus. The Tal' Shiar' may be infinitely shrewd and powerful, but its motives stemmed from paranoia and ambition. Further examination of logic led directly into the internal argument he sought refuge from.

Only action offered the relief he desired. Silencing his partner two weeks ago had prompted a feeling close to blessed oblivion in his mind. Allowing that one flash of anger to play out in concise finality had left him almost faint with pleasure. His blood seemed to flow easier, his limbs had obeyed with unnatural speed and control, and when he managed of few hours of rest his dreams bathed him in every delight he could imagine.

…And in front of him stood an opportunity to step into action again. The hunter was little more than a shadow, though M'rath knew not how. He had watched the wall open up like a slit skin and the shadow emerge carefully into the corridor. The intruder alert and the muffled sounds of battle told him this intruder was a threat to the crew, hardly a leap of logic but his methodical mind catalogued the probabilities just the same. He could serve the crew and avoid suspicion by advancing on this threat he found himself hedging. He could garner the trust of Captain Koon himself and thus strengthen his cover. After all, Vulcans fought to defend themselves. There would be few questions in attacking the creature. He could do it and no one would be the wiser. His mission would not be compromised, and that paramount qualification must be obeyed.

_Why?_ the bitter part of him asked with a note of implacable glee. It was like a parent catching him lying only to allow himself to add to the humiliation by inflaming the falsehood to obvious nonsense.

Something in M'rath broke. With a speed he could scarcely credit, he sprung on the shadow and knocked it to the floor. He sought out the throat of the shadow in an effort to slide his fingers around it and choke the life out of the creature, but the shadow solidified into a dark shape and threw him off with casual ease. M'rath saw a weapon swing down towards his head, and he sidestepped it with deft grace. In a quick gesture of open palms and probing fingers, he knocked the rifle from the intruder's hands. The hunter brought around a powerful swing intending to knock M'rath senseless, but M'rath stepped inside the arc of the blow and slipped a blow behind one of the hunter's knees.

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With a clatter Heartstock fell to the floor like a pile of rocks. The outrage he felt in being frustrated by so small a quarry didn't stop him from landing a foot directly in M'rath's chest sending him flying across the corridor. Heartstock regained his feet and tossed a stun grenade at the little man. To his surprise M'rath caught the grenade and flung it further down the corridor. The flash of light and noise only served to highlight the little man charging at him again. Heartstock tried to sidestep the charge, but he failed to land the blow to the ribs that would have crippled M'rath. The little man seemed to slide past his arm and hand and used the force of the intended strike to unbalance Heartstock. In an untidy heap he lurched to the floor again only to have the indignity of a heavy kick to his helmet force the precious gear off his head. Heartstock managed to land another powerful kick to M'rath's chest, but the little man landed on his feet even as he slid backwards.

In desperation he slid a stun grenade along the floor knowing the little man could not catch this without setting it off. Impossibly M'rath spun about and caught the grenade with the toe of his shoe, whirled around and sent the grenade right back at Heartstock. Though he had never seen ballet, Heartstock knew a dance move when he saw one. This deft pirouette had caught the grenade so smoothly, whipped it around the little man so quickly, and aimed it back at him so precisely the grenade caught him already agape with shock. _How could this be happening?_ His frantic mind wondered before the grenade flashed him senseless. He never felt the beating M'rath gave him that kept him unconscious.

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It was like breathing the fresh air after a deep dive. M'rath's relief bordered on ecstasy after he withdrew to survey his handiwork. Panting from exertion, he leaned against a bulkhead and basked in precious, blessed relief. Tears of joy ran freely down his face. Eventually the release of pent up emotions was so great it unhinged his knees and he slid to the floor. He raised his hands to his eyes and watched the tremors vibrate with delicious relish. His palms were bleeding green blood, and it felt good. His body was exhausted and that felt good as well. Fingers angled off in unnatural knarls of twisted and broken bones. A lumpy, misshapen mass on the back of his hands indicated more bones were damaged, but he felt no pain. He felt more at ease, more natural than at any other time in his life.

…But his cover was blown. There was no way he could convince anyone the stranger had received the damage to his head and face from a simple fight. He'd stunned and brutally beat the hapless alien until he broke the bones in his hands. Vulcans didn't do things like this. The only saving grace was the alien had survived his attack. While not much was left of the thing's face, M'rath saw the rise and fall of the intruder's chest and heard the wet sniffles of his breathing. Even if he killed the alien, there was no way to hide what he had done.

_I don't care,_ he thought impulsively. The notion pleased him. It felt correct and fulfilling. _I DON'T CARE_! He thought again with more certainty. Again the sheer liberating power of this unholy defiance settled in his mind like water in a parched throat. _I don't care if they find out_, he thought then added aloud, "I don't care," with sudden resolution.

He would break his cover and be done with it. Anything was better than the agony of being someone he was not and never had been.

M'rath tapped his com badge and called out, "Security."

"Go ahead," Lieutenant Shin's voice replied.

"Two to beam to the brig. I just dropped," using the word _dropped _instead of a more Vulcan turn of phrase sent a thrill of delight through him, "one of the intruders."

An instant later he was sitting on the floor of the holding cell too overcome with relief and physical exhaustion to rise. The guard took one look at him and assumed he was injured. He dashed forward and hauled M'rath out of the cell by his armpits. The guard almost dropped M'rath when he noticed he was giggling. Before M'rath could stop himself he was laughing hysterically. New tears of joy rolled from his eyes as his belly began to hurt from the laughter. He laughed so hard he gasped for air desperately and painfully.

The guard watched M'rath with idle fascination at first. Then fascination turned to worry. Then worry was overcome by a hitch in the guard's breathing. Soon he was infected by M'rath's laugh and began to stagger about the room when he couldn't stop.

M'rath decided to begin his new existence that day by announcing it to the guard when he caught his breath. "Friend," he gasped, "might I have the…" he gasped for air again before he could finish, "…pleasure of your name? I'm afraid it's escaped my mind."

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_Pioneer _ran from the Great Barrier at Warp 9.993 for over an hour before she slowed to a more manageable Warp 8.5 cruising speed. Battered and crippled, she still could run from danger to escape. Her exterior was scored by scorch marks and dented by meteorites close in to the Flare. One of her nacelles stuck out at an odd angle and wobbled drunkenly on the end of its pylon. The stump of the mission module mast stuck out of her back like a broken tooth from diseased gums. She listed to starboard slightly and required constant correction by her computer to keep her on the desired course. The decks around her main impulse drive had imploded and there was little doubt once she dropped out of warp, she wouldn't move again for a long time.

Gordon mixed his metaphors when he considered how to describe the ship's condition. The incident with the _Lassen's Cutoff _had been like a venomous snake bite. They had been paralyzed true, but with a great deal of care _Pioneer_ had pulled through. The damage from the Flare jump had been like getting the recovering patient to rise from her sick bed and run a fast sprint in a sleet storm; thus causing the onset of emphysema. The attack from the hunters had been like a crippling dose of pneumonia along with it. The patient was now running as fast as she could, but once she stopped she would drop where she stood without pausing to find a suitable bed to rest. _Pioneer _was in a bad way and there wasn't a soul aboard who would doubt it.

Fortunately most of the damage was localized and easily isolated in terms of crew safety. Unlike the _Lassen's Cutoff_ damage which had first crippled their control leads, then collapsed the entire power network at a stroke, the new damage could be reviewed and studied in comparative leisure. Once shut down, the damage to the impulse drive posed no threat to the crew at all, and if kept sealed off, the broken mast could be ignored completely. Everything else was more akin to minor, more irritating than life threatening, breakdowns. Gordon reported as much to Okuma and she agreed to allow most of his people some rest.

It was not that way in sick bay. Doctor Mashdi Fahdlan was inundated with a sudden rush of over a hundred bodies in under an hour. Ranging from bad cuts and burns to serious trauma, he quickly set up triage out in the corridor with the help of two of the patients he had confined to their beds earlier that day. One of them was still so ill she staggered around the corridor in a near delirium of fever and the drugs he had administered to fortify her system. The other hobbled around cheerfully on a bad leg atrophied with not-quite-healed nerve damage glad to be allowed to walk about and help for the first time in a month.

Doctor Fahdlan had spent much of the past six weeks treating what he called "playtime injuries" cuts, bruises, broken bones, strained muscles, tendons, and backs; the sort of things that involved a great deal of pain here and there but not infectious of life threatening. In the past seven years he had operated primarily as a clinician dealing with infections, minor parasites, and the occasional injury. Now he had to shift his work habits to that of a trauma surgeon. Had it only been a patient or two, he might have accepted the challenge cheerfully as a welcome change of pace. Instead he had almost half the crew invading his sick bay dumping bodies pell-mell wherever they could find room. The med units were filled almost at once, and then the patients unceremoniously kicked out of them as more serious cases arrived. It was total bedlam.

Before leaving Earth, Doctor Fahdlan had read about the installation of Emergency Medical Programs in all Starfleet vessels, and had been appalled. Taking medicine out of the hands of men and into the logic circuits of computers stabbed at his professional ethics on so many levels. At the time, he had been glad _Pioneer_ launched before this new technology could be installed; now he needed fifty of the cursed gadgets. Appraising the situation briefly he weighed the advantages and disadvantages of asking for some help. Cramming more people into sick bay could cause more problems than they solved, but he had to admit his staff of eight couldn't handle the load alone.

He tapped his com badge and said, "Sick bay to Okuma."

The reply was immediate, "Go ahead."

"Things are getting ugly down here. Can you spare some people?"

"How many injured do you have?" Okuma asked.

"Ninety at last count. I can't be sure yet."

"My God!" Okuma gasped before she could stop herself. She seemed to gather her thoughts a moment before announcing, "I'll be there shortly."

Dr. Fahdlan didn't actually see her arrive for several hours, but he noticed her arrival almost at once. Sick bay emptied of everyone except the then worst cases and his staff five minutes after he called Okuma. Ten minutes later the shouting, frantic free-for-all had turned into something he could follow. An hour later he glanced out in the corridor and noticed two orderly rows of bodies lined up outside the door. On the far bulkhead lay an orderly line of recovering patients while on the near bulkhead lay another orderly line of patients awaiting treatment. Some of the wounded crewmen tended to the recovering patients across the corridor.

A sobering look the other way down the corridor revealed an alarming number of shrouded bodies. "Commander Okuma!" he shouted in alarm.

The Commander trotted around the corner and asked him, "Yes, doctor?"

In a near rage he shouted, "Get those bodies out of sight! I can't have my patients seeing that!"

Okuma paled, "I'm sorry, Doctor, it didn't occur to me…"

Fahdlan cut her off, "Now, Commander!"

"Yes, Doctor," she replied sheepishly and ran down the corridor to muster some help.

Fahdlan noticed his knees go week for an instant, and he leaned heavily against the door for support.

"Need help, Doc?" a voice asked.

Fahdlan looked up to see a man calmly sitting in the corridor awaiting his turn for treatment. Despite being a seasoned doctor and having been looking at this sort of thing for the last hour, he was appalled by what he saw. The speaker had serious burns over half his head and torso. Raw flesh throbbed an angry white on the man's face while a trickle from one of his eye sockets told Fahdlan that the eye hidden in that distorted flesh had been ruptured.

"We could move the bodies, Doc," the man said kindly enough. "We don't want to upset some of the other cases."

Fahdlan stared at the man in shock for what seemed a long time. How could this man conceive of a case worse than his? The kind of pain he must be enduring had to be enormous. Under normal circumstances he wouldn't allow this man out of his sight for hours.

The familiar voice of one of his staff broke his train of thought. "Doctor, we have the patient ready."

Fahdlan spun around and marched into surgery. His mind remained totally blank for the better part of two minutes before he could focus on the patient in front of him. In fact he scarcely remembered a thing for the rest of the day as one patient after another was presented to him. He later remembered weeping in a most undignified manner while treating someone, but he never remembered who. He remembered a dying woman crying out that she didn't want to die with gradually decreasing strength until her protests faded to nothing. He remembered particular injuries and exceptional cases, but he couldn't match a face with them. He remembered insisting on seeing each of them, individually, one after the other, without exception before either taking the patient himself or delegating the case to one of his staff. He managed to catch a couple of nasty traumas that might have been overlooked by an orderly or even an experienced nurse in this way, and no one breathed a letter of criticism for doing so.

By the time he'd seen the last one, he'd been working without a break for over two days, and had to be physically carried back to his bunk for some rest. While he remembered very little about the time, almost everyone he treated noted his insistent, tender concern for their welfare. Later when he told a few that he was running on automatic and couldn't have told them what he had treated them for without the proper reference, no one would believe him. The total losses amounted to twenty-five dead, fifty far too badly injured to be released for duty for anytime between a week to six months, seventy-two minor injures that would keep people off duty for a day or two, and one hundred fifteen outpatient cases, almost a third of the crew.

A few more encounters like this one would use up this crew.

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Levran awoke to find every cubic centimeter of his body throbbing with a dull ache. Nucleic buckling tended to act on organic matter like a bad case of the bends since most organic material is made of simple atoms in constant chemical reactions with more complex molecules. Unlike the heavier elements that made of the alloys used to build ships, flesh is made of comparatively simple stuff and thus there was less to break down. That didn't mean there wasn't damage, that tended to be quite extensive, but most of it was limited to leaching out suspended gas in the blood and tissues. By happy coincidence, Hirogen metabolism was uniquely suited for this kind of trouble. Amphibious by nature, their system could purge or absorb expanding gases in their blood and tissues with only mild cases of aches, pains, and the occasional hemorrhage. The humans who had done this to Levran would all be dead by now with exploded lungs and seized joints.

Painfully Levran got to his feet and examined his surroundings. The ship was a blackened mess of smashed technology and broken hunters. Surely the kind of prey who could do this to the Hirogen was a worthy prey indeed!

His first instinct was to check on the others who remained aboard, but the lighting was so dim and the hazards of carelessly walking about so obvious that he decided to do something about that first. A moment later the lighting came back on and he could survey the room. The room resembled the caves under the forests of Gli'Tok where tree roots grew into the caves in every size and shape. Columns of girders twisted about the ship from floor to ceiling while messy sprays of circuitry and connectors lay about like hair that could snare and tangle. Panels had torn loose from their mounts and cluttered the floor everywhere he looked. Strangest of all, every char in the room was stuck to the ceiling with their armrests sunk into the metal above right up to the seat. Under other circumstances Levran might have laughed.

The crew, stripped down to a total of five for the assault, were all trapped under the debris and probably dead. A futile search through the rubble confirmed his suspicions after an unknown time spent digging them all out.

This didn't bother Levran much. He'd only been a true part of this crew for a few days, and the injuries of the past year still stung enough to jade his memory of them. He was more concerned with survival. And despite all the abuse of the last year, he was an expert in this field.

He turned to the communications panel and saw that much of the subspace shielding had done its job. Unlike the rest of the ship, this rarely used system was in working order. Activating the auxiliary backup to the communications array, he tried to link up with the Hirogen sensor net.

The pride of Hirogen all across the Galaxy, the Hirogen net covered a huge amount of space in an arc from deep inside the Delta Quadrant to a wide swath inside the Beta and Alfa quadrants with a little nip into the Gamma. No other species had ever put in place so large a network, for so long, or so effectively. At the height of the Hirogen culture, this net was the lifeline of an empire that spanned three-quarters the way around the Galactic core. But that had been millennia ago. Over time and the decline of the Hirogen Empire, the net had lost two-thirds of its effective area and the Hirogen had slipped into near chaos. The loss of a central governing body in the far reaches of the Gamma Quadrant over 8,000 years ago had signaled the onset of a long decline of the Hirogen as a whole. As the infrastructure collapsed, the net began to erode under the onset of time. Most Hirogen territory in the Gamma quadrant had been lost in a brief war with a strange reptile species that had since picked up the Hirogen love for hunting, and gone so far as to breed a specific species for prey in recent years. The rest of it had been lost gradually, bit-by-bit, star-by-star, in ones or twos over the passage of time, and was directly linked to the decline of the net. As the net began to age and fall into disrepair, the Hirogen, rather than maintaining it, abandoned settlements in favor of economy. Had they managed to produce another effective government, they might have overrun the Galaxy, but they let that slip away with the generations. In time, laws had turned into codes and customs. Communities had reverted into clans or Feudal territories. By the time Levran was born, the Hirogen culture was rich and full, but their nationality was only a thing of folklore and legend. Living a nomadic life in search of prey, they couldn't understand how much over hunting had decimated the species within their borders since no one stuck around to study it. The net was something they took for granted, and it was a testament to Hirogen technology that what remained of it had functioned flawlessly for over 20,000 years without any help from the Hirogen themselves. To them it was a vast snare that entangled the unwary, and they were justifiably proud and protective of it.

Then Seven of Nine overrode it from _Voyager'_s astrometric lab in the Delta Quadrant, and almost everything began to change. No non-Hirogen had dared to use the net during the days of the Empire, and no one but the Hirogen had known about it during the decline. It came as huge shocks to have these strangers first discover the net, and then use it with more skill than they knew how to manage themselves. In places far removed from Levran and _Pioneer,_ wheels were beginning to turn in several places at once and in the same direction. After a long sleep, the massive Hirogen Empire was beginning to stir again. For now their concern consisted of proprietary use of the net, and the occasional message from one friend to another that might not have otherwise have taken place at all. For the most part, the general feeling of the Hirogen towards the strangers was one of annoyance. "How rude!" they would say to each other over gossip and hunting stories. "How dare they use our prized net! We must take steps to insure nothing so outrageous ever happens again!" Even though they had neglected it for thousands of years, to them it was sacrilege for anyone to use it but themselves. In human terms, the nearest equivalent would be to use the Pyramids at Gisa as low-rent apartments, it was downright offensive. Ships began to examine the network in some detail here and there, and what they found amazed the crews sent to investigate. A quiet minority of Hirogen was beginning to grow holding the opinion that the net had to be updated and preserved, but that would require the cooperation of every clan and every House. Since the clans constantly argued over hunting territory, such cooperation, albeit very minor, was thought of as far-fetched by common wisdom.

None of that mattered to Levran. All he needed was to send a distress signal. Hirogen, no matter how embittered, always stopped to help each other (there could be possible prey near a damaged ship after all) and he was counting on this courtesy to save his life. He tapped in the access code to access the local node.

_Strange_, he thought as the information scrolled across the hologram. The local node had to be activated in order to access it. While not unheard of, network nodes tended to fail rather than shut down. _Do they have a hibernation cycle?_ He wondered. Upon reflection he'd never heard of any standby mode or longevity cycle. Then again he knew next to nothing about the net itself. He faintly remembered the Chieftain telling the crew they had to move in before other Hirogen ships came to investigate the local break in the net. In terms of Hirogen procedure, everyone knew such investigations were often inspired by aliens shutting down or destroying the nodes in an effort to avoid detection, so gaps in the net were rigorously patrolled. But the kind of shut down prey species had to perform was a manual override impossible to overcome with a simple downloaded code. On impulse, Levran widened his network access to the next node and discovered an identical shut down. In a few moments he had identified no fewer than six nodes in some kind of standby mode.

_Impressive_, the strangers had shut down a sizable chunk of the local net in an effort to hide their activities. No other species had ever accessed the net, and even the Hirogen didn't know how to place a node (let alone six) into a standby mode. When a node stopped transmitting Hirogen ships tended to destroy the device so other species couldn't learn how to use them. That would have been an effective way of denying the use of the net to the ships in this area for good. As things stood, he was in a good position to call in other hunters to run this strange starship to ground. He couldn't believe a ship capable of surviving an assault by a team of veteran hunters would be so foolish as to leave this most central of Hirogen assets at their disposal.

_Ah! _A ship was nearby and answering his call. He would be safe in a few minutes.

Levran looked around the ruined ship and wondered what would be the best trophy of his time here. He may not have drawn blood, but he had survived where all others had perished. This was still a position of honor, and he needed a trophy appropriate to the occasion. He had little time to speculate. A moment later he received the signal from the approaching vessel to prepare for transport. On impulse, he decided the sensor logs would be a practical trophy to show to his brother hunters. He inserted a spherical gem inside the download jack and flashed the memory into it. Satisfied there was nothing left to take of value, he signaled his readiness to transport and left the hulk to drift by itself eventually down into the Great Barrier.


	4. The Hiding Place and the Answer Men

Junior Lieutenant David Cabrillo reported to the bridge and stopped in his tracks just inside the turbolift. The bridge was deserted. The young man had never seen a deserted bridge in a ship while underway. Hesitantly, overcome by a sudden flash of superstition, Cabrillo stepped off the turbo lift and stood at attention as the door slid shut behind them. Compared to the last three hours of excitement during the flare jump, the unnatural quiet of this unfamiliar room turned his spine to ice.

"That you Lieutenant?" Captain Koon's voice asked from below.

The familiar voice went a long way towards settling the boy's nerves. There wasn't a shred of fear in it. Koon sounded merely curious. He might have been asking about book titles in a library for all the concern he conveyed. "Yes, sir," Cabrello answered.

"Come up here and take navigation," the Captain ordered. The manner in which he said it reminded Cabrillo of his grandfather offering a chair on his porch so he might listen to stories for a lazy afternoon.

Cabrillo obeyed and walked around the ops consol. He saw, to his surprise, the Captain sitting alone at the helm. It was a strange and yet fascinating scene to his mind. The stillness of this ordinarily busy room contrasted even more strangely with the Captain sitting at the helm. It occurred to David Cabrillo he had never seen the Captain in any other station other than his command chair.

Koon waved a hand at the navigation console absently while he scrutinized the panel in front of him. "Right there, David," he said.

The familiar use of his name by the Captain made the young man have a sudden flash of anxiety. Was he in trouble? The images of going to the principal's office for being disobedient made his knees feel suddenly watery and unable to support his weight. Cabrello sunk into the indicated seat and stared at the panel.

"Where are we going?" Koon asked mildly.

This seemed a strange question to ask him, Cabrillo mused. "Uh, sir, I'm an astronomer," he stammered.

"I know," Koon said. "You're now a ship's navigator. Now where are we going?"

"Uh, sir, I…" Cabrello began to ask but Koon interrupted him.

"I sent the bridge crew down to help with the wounded, Lieutenant," he explained. He turned to face Cabrillo, "We have quite a few of those, in case you didn't know," he added then turned back to his panel. "I sent Lieutenant Kree along with the rest since she's been exhausted by the Flare jump. While I don't think where I sent her is in any way soothing, she needs to be up and about for a while to clear her mind." Koon sounded calm and quiet. He spoke just above a whisper as if not to offend the pristine silence of the room.

"I looked through the duty log and discovered a couple of nasty surprises," he continued. "Lieutenant Van Cliff is in sick bay with serious injuries. Lieutenant Duggig is currently on the operating table. Lieutenant Fix is senseless in triage, and Lieutenant Polk is dead. Including Kree, Okuma, and myself, those are all the qualified navigators on the ship. The list of available helmsmen is even shorter for the moment so your name is on the list of navigators from now on."

"Sir, I don't think I have the proper skills you have in mind," Cabrillo said nervously.

Koon nodded, "You're right of course. Under normal circumstances I wouldn't dream of putting you in that chair without a work-intensive year of training, but we're in luck." Koon tapped his chest with the tips of his fingers, "I'm a qualified navigator."

"What am I here for then?" Cabrillo asked.

"I can fly this ship all by myself, kid, but I have no idea where to go from here," Koon explained. "I need you to scout out a location for us to hide for the next few weeks."

"Weeks?" Cabrillo repeated dumbfounded.

Koon nodded. "Sad isn't it," he mused, "We just got her back together and now she's falling apart on us."

"I was under the impression we were close to completing the repairs," Cabrillo said.

"Nope," Koon said, "but I wouldn't blame you for thinking that. The rumor mill has told me everything under creation this past two weeks. I can't imagine what it told you."

"I suppose that's true, sir, but I'm just an astronomer," Cabrillo objected.

"And a damn fine one, David," Koon said before he could continue his protest. "You find things in sensor data I scarcely imagine about stars and planets when I look at the same information."

Cabrillo smiled in spite of himself. Now at age 24, he was the single youngest member of the crew from the beginning of the voyage all the way up to now, his credibility never quite managed to measure up to others aboard. Not that his work wasn't believed, but it lacked any real importance next that of to the more seasoned scientists. Nobody cared that he had graduated fourth in his class at the Academy when he was only seventeen. Nobody cared that he was the son, grandson, great-grandson, and great-great grandson of astronomers on both sides of his family. All the other members of the science team rolled their eyes when he explained he had been doing precisely what he was doing now since he was a toddler. All of that didn't matter. He could only be young to his colleagues, as opposed to a talented or even brilliant astronomer.

Stargazing was second nature to him, and he felt both proud and awed by his chosen vocation. The slow dance of fusion, gravity, light, magnetism, dust, and the things, when combined, they produced were endlessly beautiful and fascinating. He would have been an astronomer even if he had to stay at home and farm for a living. Living with astronomer parents and mentored by stargazing grandparents (all fourteen of them right up to 110 year old great-great grandmother Daphne Cabrillo) it was no surprise he fell into line. Dinner conversation revolved around figures, intensities, spectroscopy, gravity wells, gravity shifts, relative time, and quantum physics. It didn't hurt one bit that his parents were passionate and eager teachers. Their son David occasionally wandered with his interests, but he always came back with rapt attention. It pleased and surprised his parents to discover that not only did their son have an interest in "the family business," but was also an incredibly bright child (a pleasing happenstance to a pair of parents obsessed with bright points of light in the sky to have a bright mind in their offspring.) David rushed impatiently through school and was accepted into the Academy at the tender age of fourteen. Three years later Ensign David Cabrillo accepted the post aboard _Pioneer_ with the enthusiastic support of his entire family. His sending off party was attended by no fewer than 500 family and friends, and he could have spent days talking up the stars if the ship would have waited for him.

Then his age landed on him like a dunk in cold water.

_Pioneer_ was an unpleasant revelation to Cabrillo. While the military formalities were easy to understand, his fellow crewmen were not. In the first few days he learned not to talk about his work unless asked. This included everyone including his immediate boss Dr. Spaulding and his immediate superior Lieutenant Locke. Accustomed to sharing what he had learned almost immediately with everyone nearby, he was rebuffed at every turn by his crew mates. He was shocked to discover people turning him away with the comment, "I'm really not interested, Ensign," or something very near it. Never in his life had he been around so many hostile avenues to express his trade. He came to understand his position on _Pioneer_ was considered obsolete and unnecessary. The ship's computer automatically charted stars, and the ships sensors were the finest ever produced up to that time. Astronomy was a field relegated to universities and fueled by data the ships of the fleet sent back to them. Why keep a dedicated astronomer aboard at all when the ship could point out objects of interests along the way?

Then again there was his age. Questions about his maturity arose the moment he beamed aboard. Lieutenant Locke took one look at the fresh faced Ensign on the transporter pad and blurted, "I'm a babysitter now?" And that had set the tone for the next seven years. He was later to learn all Ensigns were treated somewhat poorly (a rank considered so junior as to not be allowed to go to the head alone.) But at seventeen, brilliant, and completely cut off from his family for the first time, Cabrillo soon discovered a whole galaxy of unpleasant facts assault him. He was repeatedly told he was eccentric and naïve. Then he was led to believe those two vises were not about to be tolerated. Time after time he found himself the butt of jokes he wasn't allowed in on, and this daily humiliation eroded his self-confidence in short order. When he tried to show how smart he was, he was dismayed to discover an entire ship of people just as smart, smarter, or unimpressed. With no one his own age around and being the only astronomer aboard, loneliness set in as feelings of isolation crashed down on him in uncontrollable waves. By the second year into the voyage, David Cabrillo had become a recluse. Over the next five years he managed to eek out a niche for himself, and gradually he became one of many familiar yet forgettable faces in the corridor. He did his job (often around the clock since there was little else for him to do,) filed his reports, and worked on his doctorate (which he received from the prestigious Greenwich University in the third year of the voyage.)

That might have been the highlight of the entire trip had Koon not called him up here. Naturally having been told all this time he was inexperienced on an almost hourly basis, he'd developed doubts about his abilities. Being told for the first time in literally years he was a "damn fine" astronomer by Captain Koon made all the loneliness and nervous silence around the crew lift off his heart like the sun over the morning horizon.

Smiling broadly, filled with an urgent desire to please his Captain, he asked, "What are we looking for in a hiding place?"

Koon itemized his thoughts in short order and Cabrillo was delighted to have over fifty candidates right off the top of his head. "We'll need to narrow it down a bit," Koon chided David gently. "Show me the systems not along our current trajectory." When the list narrowed only by about five stars the Captain added, "Show me the ones with the potential for M-class planets.

Cabrillo narrowed the field down to forty stars, then added fifteen more when he took a closer look at the data logs. "I'm sorry, sir," he said. He seemed to be saying that so often every day his throat was hoarse. "I'll try to narrow the field down some." Unfortunately he only found more stars that could have an M-class planet.

With an increasing sense of panic, David frantically tried to eliminate stars from the list so that he could tell Koon where they should go. He was close to tears with frustration when the Captain tapped him on the shoulder and said, "Calm down, David," in that same near whisper he'd been using.

"But I can't find just one," Cabrillo protested.

To his surprise Koon looked relieved. "Good," he said with sudden good humor. "Very good, we'll be hard to find around here." He scratched his chin thoughtfully for a moment then said, "What's your favorite kind of star?"

The question caught Cabrillo off balance. "My…favorite?" he asked dazedly.

"Yes," Koon said still in apparent good sprits, "What's the kind of star you'd like to study up close?"

Cabrillo couldn't believe his ears. "Isn't that rather arbitrary?" he asked. "I mean, the fate of the crew depends on the best place to hide doesn't it?"

Koon smiled, "Let's put it this way: if it doesn't make sense to me, it won't make sense to another Captain looking for us."

Cabrillo almost laughed. Koon had a whimsical side he had scarcely imagined. He turned back to the navigation panel and looked over the charts again. Much to his surprise, he discovered the controls were a near duplicate of his own work station back in the planetarium. The main difference was instead of being set up to swing his point of view around space, he had a more limited point of view in relation to a host of vector commands. He opened his mouth to point this out to Koon when he noticed… "There!" he announced with sudden energy. Without thinking he brought the system up on the main viewer. A cluster of five stars orbited each other about two light years apart. On the viewer it looked like the points of a pyramid. The system he had in mind was one of the lower corners of the pattern.

Koon studied the cluster for a time then looked at the course he would have to plot in order to get there. "It can be done," he speculated, "any reason why you want to see that system?" He listened to Cabrillo's explanation for five thoughtful minutes before he nodded his assent. He keyed in the course and _Pioneer _swung around to a new heading. "Tell me more about this cluster, David," he said. "I'm usually not impressed with this sort of thing, but you make it sound downright interesting."

Cabrillo almost exploded with excitement. For years he had been silent about his trade, and he was grateful beyond his ability to express to the Captain for giving him this opportunity. Over the next hour he barely let Koon get a word in edgewise as he explained all he knew about the cluster. To his surprise, Koon was a fine listener. He asked occasional questions and was clearly interested in what his subordinate had to say, but for the most part he let the younger man ramble on uninterrupted.

They might have gone on like that for hours to come had Okuma and Kree not stepped onto the bridge. "It's bad, Captain," Okuma announced. "Twenty dead and another forty-one down for at least a week. We'll be lucky to muster a single watch at half capacity to complete the repairs."

Koon looked grim. "I need to talk to Eddie. We can't keep falling apart like this every six weeks." He turned back to stare at their destination on the main viewer for a moment then thumped his panel as a sudden flash of insight struck him. "This calls for an overhaul," he declared. He turned to Kree, "Lieutenant, you have the con. Sam and I will be in main engineering if you need us." He motioned to the turbolift and beckoned Okuma to join him whit a curt, "Commander," before they left the bridge.

The bridge assumed its unusual silence once the door to the turbolift shut. Kree tapped a few keys on the helm control panel before she sat down with an exhausted plop. For a long time she didn't move. She stared at the main viewer without seeing it for a long time before she stretched out in the chair, slumped down in it, and let her head loll over the back.

"You could move to the Captain's chair," Cabrillo suggested brightly. "I don't think…"

"Quiet, Lieutenant," Kree said without straightening up. "I need to…" she searched for the words, "…clear my mind a while if you don't mind."

Cabrillo obeyed and turned his attention back to the man viewer while he absently tapped at a few keys to shift the view of the cluster this way and that.

After a while Kree moved to the Captain's chair and settled into it with obvious relief. "This is comfortable," she said more to herself than to her company. With a sigh she stretched out again and stared at the cluster on the screen. "Show me something else, Lieutenant," she ordered.

"Like what?" Cabrillo asked.

Kree ran her blue fingers through her white hair absently a few times before answering. "Anything beautiful," she said groggily.

Cabrillo tapped a few keys and brought up a stunning view of the Dighton nebula. One of the most fertile star nurseries in the Milky Way, the image was a spellbinding array of delicate colors and cloudy patterns. It was an image he was particularly fond of and he turned to see her reaction.

To his surprise she wore a sour expression. "Oh come on!" she spat. She waved her hand at the image and asked, "Is that the best you can do?"

Cabrillo tapped a few more keys and brought up an image of the Gannet Supernova.

"Been there, it's not that great," Kree declared.

He brought up an image of the Horseshoe nebula.

"Seen it a thousand times," Kree complained.

The image switched to the Minos Cluster.

"Too stark," Kree judged.

The Polaris system came up next.

"Unremarkable," Kree announced

Betelgeuse.

"Ugly star in my opinion."

The blue giant of Gm4458.

"Striking but unremarkable," Kree declared.

This went on for ten minutes before Cabrillo decided on an obvious candidate she would dismiss just as easily: Andoria.

Kree opened her mouth to denounce the image then shut it again.

He panned the image across the system and began to zoom in on her home planet. Soon the image ducked under the atmosphere and gently dropped to the surface of one of the oceans. He moved the point of view across the ocean until he stopped at the blue glaciers of the Commerce Straights. Similar to the glaciers found at Tierra Del Feigo at the tip of South America, these were just as striking and ten times the size. A massive wall of white and blue marched down to the water of the Straight while city sized chunks of ice caved off and thundered into the water.

He turned around to judge her reaction. She stared at it spellbound. Her antennae seemed to pulsate and breathe while the rest of her head remained absolutely still. After a long, breathless moment Kree said one word that Cabrillo new meant he had done well: "Home."

He lifted the view slowly over the glacier and ran it inland to the exotic forests of Andoria. Later he moved on to the vast deserts banding the equator, and he had some fun later on navigating through the streets of one of the larger cities. During all of this, Kree sat spellbound in the Captain's chair. For a wistful hour, she forgot the trials she had gone through in the past seven years, and reposed in the familiar scenes of a distant, perhaps forever lost, home.

After three hours of lazily drifting across Andoria's surface, Koon returned. He didn't seem upset that two of his officers were seriously, and obviously, neglecting their duties, but he did bring an end to it. He ordered Kree to her quarters for a mandatory rest of no fewer than ten hours, then settled into the helmsman's chair again next to Cabrillo.

Before she left, Kree thanked Cabrillo with a curt, "Thank you, Lieutenant," and walked off the bridge. Compared to the last few years, the young man's social life had all but exploded, and there was more to come.

"Tell me, David," Koon asked as he settled in, "What does the astronomy department need?" Over the next ten hours, Cabrillo gabbed on and on about his trade until he was hoarse. Koon listened attentively in an apparent effort to stay alert, and chatted the boy up until the young man almost forgot the loneliness of the voyage.

At the beginning of the morning watch, David was still running on full throttle when the rest of the bridge crew began to filter in. Compared to the intimacy of the empty bridge, the presence of others made him feel self-conscious and shy all over again. Among the last to enter was Lieutenant Locke. The mere sight of her choked a word right off in his throat.

Locke didn't seem at all surprised to see David here, nor did she appear to care. Huge, dark circles ringed her eyes, but her face was puffy with sleep. Ordinarily a striking woman, Locke looked pale and ill. She recoiled from loud noises and rubbed at her face as she frequently yawned. She sat at her station but clearly didn't process anything in front of her for the better part of five minutes. Her head bobbed stiffly on her neck and her hands groped around the controls in untidy sweeps. It was a side of her Cabrillo had never seen or suspected, and he caught himself trying not to stare at the spectacle of his superior. He'd come to think of Locke as an Ice Queen barren and precise, but the woman in front of him was human and ordinary. After so long under her thumb, others might have celebrated a minor victory over this figure. Instead he found a deep well of compassion for her. For the first time he had seen her at her worst and she was no triumph to be found, only a tired, young woman.

"Lieutenant," Koon said; signaling that the brief sojourn at the Captain's ear was officially over by abandoning his name in favor of his title. "You may return to your duties."

Cabrillo felt a strong sense of loss as he rose from navigation. Gripped with a sudden despair, he was certain this all too brief moment of bliss would be the last for years to come. Without a doubt the happiest moment of his time aboard _Pioneer_ (and had he been asked just then he might have qualified it as the happiest time of his life.) Now it was over. He was to march back into his reclusive way of life and to be ignored for the remainder of the voyage. It was enough to bring him to tears.

"You've been here the whole time, Cabrillo?" a voice asked him as he turned to leave.

He turned and saw to his surprise, Kree smiling at him. She stood between him and the turbolift and seemed genuinely shocked to see him here. "W-w-well," he stammered in the full grip of an attack of anxiety, "the Captain and I…" He trailed off. His shy instincts told him to shut up before he made a fool of himself, but he couldn't seem to find a way to finish his thought. He felt the eyes of others begin to linger uncomfortably on him, branding him as young and foolish with the sight of his elders.

Kree saved him by embarrassing him. She gave him a peck on the cheek and moved past him, "Thanks for letting me sleep, last night," she said lightly.

A chorus of hoots and whistles met this comment followed by a few good-natured chuckles. Cabrillo blushed bright red and staggered to the door followed by a few "Atta' boys" and pats on the back. While he was mortified by all this, he noticed that every face in the room was smiling at him. And to his shock those smiles were, for the first time, inviting. They knew he was embarrassed, but they were willing to share the absurdity of his manner with him. He may have been the butt of this joke, but he could laugh with them this time.

Before he could make it to the door, Commander Hurst stepped in front of him, and faced him sternly. Those chilly blue eyes regarded the younger man with profound gravity. Hurst then put his hands on Cabrillo's shoulders solemnly and said in his thickest German accent, "'Well done, my boy."

The room exploded with laughter. Cabrillo began to giggle at first then managed to vent a laugh or two. Hurst didn't mind a bit. His face broke into a wide grin and he patted one of David's shoulders as he showed him to the door. Before the door slid shut, Hurst confided to David, "What a nice way to start the day."

It turned out to be a nice way to end it too.

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Commander Gordon slept under a diagnostic table instead of returning to his quarters. He had no time. After two fitful hours of sleep he slid from under it and returned to work. Not the methodical, measured work of problem solving, but the hard labor of clearing debris and ruined parts of the ship. Jagged fragments were everywhere, and he had a Lieutenant go replicate gloves for everyone before the day fully got underway. That didn't stop him however from turning his hands into savaged paws at the ends of his arms.

The first day's watch arrived in a dejected flow of uneager faces. All of them were fully aware that all their hard work from the last six weeks had come close to being ruined by the intruders and the Flare, and facing the whole mess over again took the fight right out of them. Their postures sagged and their eyes regarded the floor with disinterested fascination. Some sported angry wounds and moved with obvious pain. One poor fellow had his right hand bound up in a strange, flattened shell that reduced that appendage to no more than a plate. Another had so many bits of neuro-chips over his head he resembled a crude Borg drone.

"Good morning, everyone," Gordon announced as the last of them filtered in. "I'm sure you're all aware that the situation is grim."

Eyes rolled, heads nodded, and disgusted grunts rumbled through the assembled engineers. The utter chaos of the deck was plain for all to see, and they were impatient with any comment that would draw attention to it. Attention they knew full well they and precious few others would have to lavish upon this heap of a ship once again. As if once through the fire wasn't enough!

"But things are not as desperate as they were before," Gordon informed them. "If you all will note behind me, the warp core is operating and we are underway."

Some more eyes rolled, but a few head looked up in surprise for they hadn't noticed the steady pulse of the core. Some faces looked downright relieved at the sight. Maybe there was hope after all.

Gordon decided to inform them all in full of the magnitude of what Koon and he had worked out yesterday. "We can't keep rebuilding _Pioneer_ every time we get in a scrape," he announced. "I'm sure you all will agree with the Captain and I that continuing as we have for the past few weeks: is unsupportable."

"We need just a little time to put her fully back together again," one of his people insisted. "Just give us a while longer in the clear, and we'll get it done."

"Or do the sensible thing and go home," another voice said bitterly. A few grunts of agreement met this statement, but Gordon was relieved to note the grumblers were a distinct minority. He knew he couldn't count on things to stay this way, but he was satisfied his people weren't fatally divided.

Gordon decided to ignore the grumblers and announced the full scope of what was to come. "We're going to rebuild the ship. As soon as the Captain makes orbit around a suitable planet, we'll set to work building a dry dock then tear down the ship and completely refit her for what's ahead."

Strangely there was almost no response to what he said. Eyes narrowed or widened, a few jaws went slack, but for the most part his people simply stared at him.

"Why not build a whole new ship?" someone finally asked.

Gordon smiled at the invitation, "What would you change?" he asked.

The man rolled his eyes and began enumerating his ideas on his fingers. "Delete the mission mast outright and use the structure behind the saucer section for a hangar, reinstall the phaser capacitors closer to the emitters…"

"Yeah," someone agreed behind him, "we must lose a third of the power for each shot in the maze of power relays."

The first man wasn't finished yet, "We should move all the science stations closer to the main computer. We could save thousands of kilos in networking gear by doing so." This met up with universal agreement.

A diminutive female Lieutenant chimed in next. "We could lengthen the ship out to improve her stability at high warp."

A sudden hush fell over the engineers at the thought of it. "They won't let us run that wild," the first man said.

"On the contrary," Gordon interrupted. "We have Captain Koon's full authority to redesign the ship in any form we wish. Given a little time, we could rebuild _Pioneer_ into a _Galaxy_-class ship if we deem it necessary."

"That would be a mistake," the woman said harshly.

"Can you tell me why?" Gordon asked.

"Those ships are _huge_," she pointed out. "We need to decrease our workload. In a ship like that we'd be undermanned for simple housekeeping let alone the breakdowns."

"Double or triple our workload by making more stuff that will break?" another man asked himself laconically. "I'll pass on that."

Gordon was surprised this was going half so well. The mood was sour, but the engineers were trying to solve problems instead of digging in their heels and refusing to contribute. "We will be allowed to proceed as we see fit with an eye on survivability, flexibility, and crew comfort."

"Why crew comfort?" The laconic engineer asked. "We can be made to fit around the ship instead of the other way around, and that will solve a few nagging problems."

Gordon was dreading this part. He and Koon agreed that bringing up the overall mission in any setting today was likely to be ugly. The crew had just taken a body blow to the moral and worse was likely to come at this rate. Fortunately he was saved by the woman who pointed out, "We still have a long way to go._ Voyager_ is still out there and we must link up with her. If we redesign the ship for our sake," she motioned about the room indicating all the engineers, "most of us will be sick of travel before we get there. No, we have to keep the crew happy and comfy."

Gordon would have put it almost in the same words, but coming from one of the "troops" brought the idea down a notch from the nebulous strategies of the hierarchy, to the able hands and minds of professionals charged with concerns closer to the hearts of the crew. Had he told the woman to speak out before the engineers gathered, it couldn't have worked out better. Since she had volunteered it without prompting of any kind, Gordon was all the more impressed. No wonder Peyter was proud of them.

"Well we can't just run wild with our ideas yet," the first man said.

"True," Gordon said. "I have a design for the ship I want all of you to study and review. Bear in mind this is a very rough draft of what I have in mind. Feel free to criticize, add, detract, improve, or refine anything you find, but by the time the dry dock is finished, I want your last judgment filed and supported and not while we have the ship torn apart. Agreed?"

They nodded agreement.

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Angela Semmes ground her teeth until crewmen across the bridge recoiled from the sound. Her hands gripped the arms of her command chair hard enough to break seven out of ten of her manicured nails. Anger was not adequate to describe the feeling she endured that moment. Frustration was not sufficiently enormous a concept to fill the gap. _Peyter survived! That dumb little Russkie survived a direct assault by Hirogen hunters? How dare he do this to me? How dare the Hirogen fail me so? How dare my crew hide their seven year failure to destroy one puny little cruiser behind a Hirogen miscalculation?_

Beside her, King waited patiently for the next outburst. Semmes never took news well. Good news, bad news, it didn't matter; if something upset her fixed view of her experience, she was liable to explode. In one sense that made her perfect for Section 31. After all she would fully engage her passions to bring Section 31's agenda into line. But King had his doubts that a desire to affix the current order of things was really what was needed in a commander. Weren't they supposed to be flexible? Wasn't a gifted commander to know how to turn the advantage in any situation?

With remarkable calm Semmes asked, "Do we have a fix on their position?"

The tactical officer answered, "No, Captain, we never had a firm fix on their position before or after the engagement."

"What about a warp trail?" Semmes asked.

The Science Officer saw this as his cue and informed her, "Impossible to sort out. Hirogen ships swarmed the area and began a standard search of the nearby systems."

Semmes had to scoff at that one. Hirogen search patters made almost no sense from a systematic point of view. Hirogen Captains tended to follow gut instincts and follow them to the ends of oblivion. Others were motivated by jealousy to follow or simply point their ships in the opposite direction and determine an equally absurd destination to examine. "What about a Starfleet signature to the warp fields?"

The Science Officer shook his head. "I can only assume they significantly damaged their warp drive in some fundamental way. Not one trail matches _Pioneer's_."

Semmes regarded the Science Officer with icy distain. _What good are you to me if you can't meet my needs?_ She asked the man silently. Aloud she ordered, "Don't make assumptions, Mr. Green. We are engaged in deadly business here. I don't think I'm willing to bet our actions against _your_ assumptions."

Green paled under Semmes abuse, and gratefully returned to his station when she moved on to the next item on her agenda.

"How long till our arrival in the area?" Semmes asked the Navigator.

"Three weeks, Captain," the man answered.

"Try to trim some time off that, Mr. Humbolt," she ordered.

Considering her options, Semmes wished once again that she had defied Admiral Forrestal and simply destroyed _Pioneer_ herself. It would have been a popular move among her crew, and she doubted the distant Admiral could have affected her removal had she given the order. But that sort of insubordination left a vast gulf between the order of things before such an act and the reality created by consequences. It would be like turning to a life of crime. The day a man murders he is forever afterwards a murderer. The hour a man steals marks the beginning of the time he shall spend as a thief. The instant a man forces himself on a woman he is forever afterwards a rapist even if he was a good man in days gone by. Semmes would not give up her blessings lightly. After all she had the elimination of 815 at the forefront of her mind, but for now the toll was unknown and the possibility existed that she had the full tally yet to claim. If it could be done quickly, with the full blessing of Section 31, she might be able to sidestep the consequences for herself and her crew. Angela Semmes would do many things for Section 31, but like all of the hierarchy of this most pragmatic of organizations she would not abide an instant of shame for it. There would never be a day she would not hold her head high with pride in what she'd done. Shame was for victims and the oppressed. Shame was to be born by Peyter Koon and the crew of USS _Pioneer._

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Koon managed three hours of sleep before Speer came to wake him. At first he couldn't recognize his head of security. Dermal regeneration had healed much of the damage, but the man was completely bald. A strange metal eye-patch was savagely clamped over his right eye giving the ordinarily handsome man an ominous expression. Speer's usual athletic grace was stilted and stiff today. On occasion the young man stiffened in pain for no apparent reason, and his concentration was clearly fragmented into short, painful bursts that bent the man over to endure.

"You shouldn't be on duty, Commander," Koon said, "In your condition I'd…"

Speer was impatient and cut his Captain up short, "If it's all the same to you, Captain, my quarters were blown away yesterday, so I might as well work."

Koon felt genuine concern for the man, "Adam, you need rest."

Speer shook his head. "When I heard about this, I knew I couldn't sleep until I presented it to you." He passed Koon a data pad.

Peyter took it gingerly. Weary wasn't close to describing how he felt. Blasted flat to the ground more like. Before he'd gone to bed Koon had been up for three days, give or take a few hours, in preparation for the flare jump, then the hours he'd spent sorting out what had to be done to the ship. It seemed he'd just eased into bed, when Speer came calling at the door with one more detail. One more thing for him to…

Peyter's mind did a double take on what he held in his hand. He looked back to Speer for confirmation and the tall, injured man gave a nod. Returning to the report in his hand, Koon read its contents carefully. He had a good memory for things he read. Something about the process of translating words he could see into thoughts made an indelible impression on his memory, a trait that had been of indispensable value during his life. Even though Koon could read at an astonishing 80,000 words per minute, he read this report with all the care he could muster for several long minutes.

He set the report aside and pronounced it, "Remarkable!" and immediately began to calculate how the balance of reality would shift aboard his ship.

"I'll see him at once," Koon announced and marched briskly for the door.

Speer followed painfully in his wake. Koon knew this news had to injure the younger man in very fundamental ways, but Koon had to hand it to Speer: he was being downright stoic in bearing the news so frankly. A lesser man might have made an attempt at spin control, but Adam Speer had presented the bald, unflattering facts without hesitation or fear.

A few minutes later the two men stood in the brig. In the first cell lay the heap of the alien they had captured. As remarkable as this being was, both men marched right past the invader and stopped in front of the next cell in line. Behind the containment field, gingerly cradling his hands in his lap sat Lieutenant M'rath. The man stood at attention when Koon appeared. "Hello, Captain," M'rath said.

"You have something to tell me, Lieutenant?" Koon asked mildly.

M'rath nodded. "It is my sad duty as a member of this crew to report that I am," he paused as seemed to gather himself, "a mole." He pronounced it in a gust of breath as if he didn't trust his faculties to confess his crimes except in a short burst.

Koon was stony faced. "Can you tell me more, Lieutenant?"

A wave of unfamiliar emotion washed over the man's face before he replied. Koon thought he detected relief there. "A great deal indeed, Captain. A lifetime more."

Koon stared at him intently. "Go on."

"My parents are Romulan, I am Romulan, and I have awaited the order from my Tal' Shiar' masters to activate my mission for my entire life. I have the frustrating duty to inform you, Captain, that I have no idea what those orders were to be, only that I was to obey them."

"And why are you telling me this now, Mr. M'rath?" Koon asked.

M'rath took a deep breath and searched his heart for the right words. "I can't live like this anymore," he said. His voice cracked and a tear rolled down one of his cheeks. "I'm exhausted, Captain. I can no longer suppress my emotions to portray a Vulcan for another instant. What I did to that poor creature in the next cell has convinced me that doing so will endanger the lives of people who trust me, and my life as well. I want to live my life as I am not as who I've appeared to be."

Koon folded his arms in front of him and stroked his chin thoughtfully. He hadn't shaved before he marched down here, and the stubble on his face felt sharp under his fingertips. This man had been right under his nose for years, and he had never suspected a thing. Pity that such a talented operative worked for the other side. _Or was it?_ Of all the things _Pioneer _had discovered out this way there wasn't a single item he wouldn't gladly share with anyone. In the scientific arena, the discoveries were bland almost to the point of being esoteric. There were only two first contacts made on this mission so far. Three if one counted the aliens of the day before. Aside from the hostility of their most recent acquaintances, he could think of nothing terribly shocking about any of them. Down in engineering, Gordon had made a few advances in warp core durability and maintenance, but nothing strategically sensitive. The man inside the cell had access to the most sensitive systems aboard the ship, but the _Nebula_-class was not designed to be a warship (that was more the _Galaxy_-class' element) nor was she the embodiment of revolutionary design (once again more along the lines of the _Galaxy_-class.) Instead _Pioneer_ and her sisters were intended to be dependable, durable, adaptable frames that embodied the lessons learned at a very basic level about starship design and construction over the past two hundred years. The _Nebula's_ were intended to be a workhorse ship while other classes were meant to be showpieces. In a strategic sense _Pioneer_ had nothing to offer Romulan intelligence they couldn't find out for themselves or ask for openly. The operative inside the cell knew that as well as Koon did.

"Mr. Speer," Koon said as inspiration struck him, "see to it Mr. M'rath gets the medical attention he needs when it becomes convenient for Doctor Fahdlan."

"Aye, sir," Speer replied.

"Mr. M'rath, you've found me at a bit of a loss right now. I really can't spare you," M'rath and Speer gaped at Koon in astonishment. "However, I cannot deny that a possible conflict of interests exists between your Romulan orders and my mission. So I will ask you to explain any conflict you know of or can foresee."

M'rath was speechless. Speer was dumbfounded. The standard procedure for treason was an immediate inquiry followed by court-martial, and incarceration or deportation. Mercy of any kind wasn't to be found on the list. Koon was ignoring the rules in a big way. If high command found out, no if's and's or but's, he would be tried for treason himself and convicted without a hitch.

"Sir, I…" Speer began to protest, but Koon brought him up short.

"This mission had nothing to do with Romulus, Commander. NOT ONE WORD of my orders involves Romulus implicitly or explicitly. In fact, I'd wager we'd have much to tell Romulus if I had a representative aboard that could be used to our mutual benefit." Koon explained. "I'm more worried about those newcomers we met yesterday and _Voyager_."

"If only you knew, Captain," M'rath blurted.

Koon smiled graciously, "Then explain my errors to me, Mr. M'rath."

M'rath thought about it carefully before he answered. "For one, Captain, we have vital star charts no one else has mapped out."

"Charts I will gladly show anyone who wishes to see them," Koon countered.

"You don't understand, sir, Romulus would do anything for those charts to remain forever blank to their enemies… or allies for that matter," M'rath explained. "It's not that you're willing to show them freely, it's that they will see power in silencing you."

"Silence is a difficult source of power to maintain," Koon pointed out. "It tends to consume far more resources than it saves in the long run."

"Resources my superiors will gladly tend to so long as they see security in it," M'rath argued. "Surely you don't believe they will allow you to keep, let alone distribute, this sort of information if they can have sole domain over it."

Koon eyed the man skeptically, "Do you believe in the utility of such wasteful nonsense, Mr. M'rath?"

M'rath looked cornered. "No I don't," he admitted. "The burden of my secrets almost crushed me. I can't see that being useful on any scale."

Koon nodded. "That's really what this interview is about: what you believe, Mr. M'rath. I'm willing to let your actions spell out your beliefs. They are certainly more eloquent than your intentions. Right now I imagine a great deal of confusion for you in this area. Am I right?"

M'rath agreed with a weary nod. "Very confused, sir," he said.

Koon beamed at the man. "I'm willing to work through this with you in exchange for your complete honesty from here on out, if you're willing."

M'rath looked confused. "But I'm a traitor!" he protested.

"We can't let him wander free around the ship," Speer added with alarm. "We must have some measure of security."

"Indeed, Mr. Speer," Koon agreed. "But it must be pointed out that you and I have allowed a mole to exist fatally close to us for some time now." He appraised M'rath with cold resolve. "We would do well to learn as much as we can from him."

"Excuse me, sir?" Speer asked now completely confused.

"I want you to work closely with our home-grown traitor from now on, Mr. Speer. He clearly knows the game better than we do. Perhaps we can make some use of his skills," Koon speculated.

"That makes you a fool, Captain," M'rath pronounced coldly.

Koon shrugged. "I think that's been made crystal clear by your example, Mr. M'rath," he said lightly. "And my mother was not one to suffer fools, so it's up to me to reform my ways. You can either be a part of it and lend your best efforts to this crew and its survival, or you will perish on the strength of my skills. What do you say?"

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Commander Porter stood at attention as Admiral Ross reviewed what was left of Admiral Forrestal's command. Deactivation of an entire fleet was a rare, and oddly sad, experience Porter had to admit. Plain of the faces of all the other officers around him was the strong sense of loss they felt. The end of a distinguished organization had landed on their watch, and no one was glad or relieved the end had come. A few of them had expressed a desire to retire from service along with Forrestal, but for the most part those who chose to stay would be scattered to the four winds in a minor reshuffling of postings and commissions. The larger majority of the Federation 14th Fleet had already been absorbed into the rest of Starfleet leaving only the Flag Staff to attend to the final details. None of the Captains attended the ceremony. Their disgust with Starfleet for allowing their jobs to founder so haphazardly was well known and in particular their enmity towards Forrestal was the subject of heated conversations throughout all the Fleets. On Forrestal's watch no fewer than four ships had met untimely ends, and they had been the catalyst for disbanding the 14th. USS _Endeavor_ had run afoul a nasty tear in space on her way to explore the galactic heliopause four years ago. USS _Calcutta_ had been caught inside the Romulan Neutral zone and had managed to limp to safety before she had to be abandoned and destroyed. Before that USS _Hokkaido_ had vanished on its mission to explore the Horseshoe Cluster and was presumed destroyed by the native inhabitants of the region. And six years ago USS _Pioneer_ had disappeared into the dust cloud surrounding the Galactic Core never to be heard from again. USS _Voyager's _and USS _Equinox's_ subsequent disappearance deflected much of the accusations of mismanagement. The point was made that space was far from the safest frontier to wander, and Forrestal was allowed to deactivate his command rather than hand it over to another Admiral. It was the Captains' argument that Forrestal was disgracing those below him so that he could retire in relative peace. Porter understood their outrage.

On the other hand Porter could not understand Forrestal's motives. The Admiral had taken the loss of each ship with surprising grace. One could almost claim the man considered these kind of peacetime losses to be routine. The mandatory inquiries had been filed, but Forrestal had not pressed them with much energy. He appeared content to write letters of condolence by the hundred rather than raise a hand to prevent further losses. Porter knew that the 14th fleet was suffering from a desperate personnel shortage, the sole exception being the ill-fated _Pioneer_ lost with a full, and very young, crew not long after Forrestal had assumed command of the 14th. After her loss Forrestal struggled to keep ships skeletally manned and seemed unable to recruit enough people to fill the rosters. Even though the 14th Fleet was not the largest one in the Federation (that distinction fell to the massive Klingon Blood Fleet fully two billion souls strong) and massive infusions of crewmen from other fleets, Forrestal seemed incapable of keeping his ships adequately manned. The numbers simply didn't add up. The 14th needed eighty-thousand personnel at full strength, give or take, and Porter knew Forrestal had stripped the other fleets of almost every man they could spare. All told Porter had signed off on the transfer and recruitment of a full seventy thousand crewmen. A staggering triumph in administration to be sure, but all of Forrestal's ships were screaming for people for the better part of eight years. Through ordinary losses (retirements, transfers, promotions, and so on) the fleet had lost ten thousand people over the last eight years. Through off-duty accidents they had lost another two thousand. Through on-duty accidents (barring the loss of the four ships) they had lost about five thousand. Through the loss of the four ships they had lost almost twelve-hundred people (two thirds of them aboard _Pioneer._) That meant that less than nineteen thousand people were lost over the span of eight years. A full tally of suspected or confirmed dead ran near or above two thousand people, most of those on the lost ships. In a peacetime Fleet those kinds of losses were ten times that of the acceptable norm. And now they were disbanding. With the Borg incursions sill fresh in Federation memory and the Dominion War beginning to get ugly (if sporadic,) the disbanding of an entire fleet seemed downright foolish. Every Captain in Starfleet had said as much, but Admiral Ross had accepted Forrestal's proposal and this was the last act of it.

"An ignominious end to the 14th," Ross commented bitterly. He appeared upset by this turn of events, and he wasn't ashamed to show it. It wasn't that he was deactivating ships he needed; they were to be transferred to other units bloodied by the desperate fighting of the previous years. Instead he was upset by the hole this was going to leave in the command structure. His Fleets were in desperate shape and needed the ships and men just to remain effective units no doubt, but Fleets offered specific options and performed specific functions from one to the next. For instance he could ask the First Fleet for troubleshooting and First Contact missions, and feel secure that they had both the people and the command structure to support those missions. He could ask the Ninth Fleet to handle a full scale battle, and rest easily in the knowledge it was designed to handle the task. The 14th's forte had been pure exploration and science with a flare for reconnaissance and scouting. Ross had to admit science and exploration had to take a backseat to more urgent matters at present, but the loss of those abilities would never be fully regained for decades. It was a fine point to make, but Forrestal had been persuasive. The 14th was not designed for combat. It was in the best interest of the Federation to use the resources of the 14th to more immediate needs. It disgusted Ross to demure to the other man's judgment.

Forrestal seemed grim yet vitally charged with energy. His stride was purposeful and oddly proud. He all but dragged Ross around once the man arrived at the Headquarters building in San Francisco. Porter visibly flinched when his boss introduced him to the CSO (Commander Starfleet Operations) because he didn't want to be here. "Commander Porter, this is Admiral William Ross," Forrestal said.

Porter stood at rigid attention and saluted. He kept his eyes staring at an unfocused point above Ross's head burning with humiliation. _Damn Forrestal! _He thought. His name was now closely tied to this shameful business and he wanted nothing more than to choke the man to appease his insulted honor.

Ross seemed preoccupied. He returned the salute casually and continued to survey the room full of officers. Down the line were two Rear Admirals that were turning the color of paper and almost shaking with fear. If their names became tied too strongly to the events of this day, their careers would come to an end. Any hope they might entertain of attaining a field command in the ongoing war would be dashed. Porter knew both men opposed Forrestal's move to disband their units, but neither had the clout to overrule their boss. They were good men caught under the thumb of a lesser man, but Ross wasn't being told that. Instead he went down the line of men and faintly acknowledged each. _Perhaps_, Porter thought, _he's as confused as we are about this turn of events._

And that was the most upsetting part of this affair. Forrestal had ram-roded this initiative ostensibly to reinforce the other fleets. A strange move when he had proven his ability to recruit and reassign to his fleet. Why hadn't he committed his organization to the war instead of dismantling it? If he didn't have the stomach for what was to come, why not step aside and let someone who did have command? Why did Ross allow such a… confounding action to go through?

Ross surprised Porter by saying, "I understand you've got a ship."

"Yes, sir," Porter replied.

Ross appeared to search his memory for an instant before he gave up on the endeavor. "Pardon my ignorance, but I've forgotten which one it is."

"The _Thunderchild_, sir," Porter said, "Executive Officer."

Ross nodded thoughtfully. "A good ship. She's seen some tough action in recent years. I expect you'll be quite busy once you're aboard."

"Yes, sir," Porter said.

Ross seemed to lose his focus and began to project a great gravity about him, "So many are gone now."

"Indeed, sir," Porter agreed stiffly. How he hated this day!

"Give Captain…" Ross trailed off searching for the name. He rubbed his brow and clearly struggled for several moments to recall the _Thunderchild_'s CO. After a while he gave up and turned a surprisingly stricken expression on Porter. "I'm sorry; it's been a… troubling time here recently. Give the CO of the _Thunderchild _my regards and my heartfelt apologies. I owe the officer dinner when they arrive back here."

Porter nodded, "I'll pass that along."

"Thank you, Commander…" Ross trailed off then shook his head clearly angry with himself. "Dammit! I just heard your name! Now I owe you dinner."

"I'll bring Captain Kukulius for the occasion," Porter said.

"I'll look forward to it," Ross said with a gracious smile. "Good luck, Commander."

As the grim and clearly strained Admiral moved down the line of officers Porter reflected things couldn't have gone any better with the man. The possibility of avoiding the career-hatchet brightened a touch. In fact Porter began to look forward to his new assignment. He'd always preferred a fleet station to a flag assignment, and the _Thunderchild_ was one of the jewels of the fleet. Not even a decade old, she boasted all the new features his last fleet posting aboard the _Hermes_ so desperately lacked. Furthermore, Porter's correspondence with Captain Kukulius was more than a little promising. Unlike the austere and aloof Forrestal, Captain Kukulius appeared to be even-tempered and approachable. He'd been as forthcoming as he could over the subspace net and had cut off conversations with genuine regret Porter thought. He had hopes they would work well together, but his experience with Forrestal had made him a careful man.

Damn the man! Why deactivate the fleet? Where did all those people go? And why was the man so damned overjoyed today? What advantage did he gain today? Why did Starfleet allow this travesty? And what had Porter missed to be unable to answer these questions?

Frustrated, Porter mulled over the circumstances of the day all through the ceremony. He pondered the finer points on his way to the transport off Earth. He speculated freely on the ship that carried him out of the Sol system. And he managed to dismiss it from his mind only moments before stepping aboard his new ship. And during all that time he kept coming back to the start of all his troubles: the day _Pioneer_ vanished. Before that day six years ago Porter could track a solid record of events. The day after her transmissions ceased information became fragmented and tangled. What did _Pioneer _take with her that so unhinged the reality of Starfleet? What secret did Peyter Koon take to his grave that set this confusion rolling?

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"Dead?" Lieutenant-Commander Barney Blackburn asked for the second time.

The Captain in charge of delivering the news to Commander Blackburn came with the all too appropriate name of Graves, and nodded sadly to the man before him.

"That can't be," Blackburn protested. "I spoke with her last week."

"I'm so sorry for your loss, Commander; rest assured you have my heartfelt sympathies…" Captain Graves said as gently as he could before he was abruptly cut off.

Blackburn seemed to swell in his slight uniform to fully block the view in front of Graves. "I rather doubt you can come close to understanding my feelings right now, Captain," Blackburn growled. "You see, you're the fourth man to stand in front of me and tell me with the same canned words about the death of someone close to me."

Graves was surprised. Nothing in the report he'd been given said a word about that. Not only that, but Blackburn's anger was nothing short of mystifying. Blackburn was a short, slight man of about forty years. Soaking wet in his clothes the man didn't look an ounce over a hundred pounds. Every image Graves had seen of the man in front of him showed a demurring, stooped, painfully shy man with a balding head and downcast eyes. Those that knew Blackburn described the man as a stumbling, shuffling, mumbling academic who rarely spoke above a whisper. By contrast the man in front of him was still short, slight, and balding, but the voice erupting from the figure demanded all the attention of a slap in the face.

"Four! By God! Four!" Blackburn bellowed. His eyes stared into Graves as though trying to melt the man into his shoes. "One wife lost with her ship during the original Borg incursion, one son lost on his ship during the next, one daughter lost on her way to the Galactic core, and now another daughter, _MY LAST LIVING CHILD,_ lost in the Gamma Quadrant to the Dominion!" The little man shouted this at Graves centimeters from his nose, and Graves found his knees begin to falter under him. As Blackburn spoke again, he stared down the Captain until Graves was sprawled awkwardly across the floor. "What do you know about the empty assurances of Starfleet? What do you know about the feeble-minded diplomats in the Federation that _sent my family to their deaths?_ Can you explain why I must cheerfully sacrifice the blood of my family to advance the ambitions of men sequestered safely away in San Francisco? Do you have the first notion of what I would give to bring my family back?"

Graves discovered he was scooting along the floor away from Blackburn who had seemed to grow to the size of a demon in the blink of an eye. "Commander, I…"

"I would kill them all with my bare hands to spare them!" Blackburn shouted. "I would rip the throats out of every man west of the Sierras and eat their flesh to bring them back! I would burn Admiral Hays alive over the smoldering corpse of that jackass Bill Ross to save just one of my girls!" Blackburn pointed an accusing finger down at the stunned man on the floor. The hand attached to it shook with rage and Graves had the unsettling notion that the hand would tear free of Blackburn's arm to gouge out his eyes. "Enough!" Blackburn shouted, "They've taken my youth, they've taken my family, they've taken every scrap of labor my hands have turned since I was a teenager. YOU TELL THEM THEY OWE ME MY BLOOD, AND I WANT IT NOW!!!!!!

"Commander, I…" Graves stammered.

**_"SILENCE_**!!!" the word filled the room until the bulkheads rattled. "Starfleet owes me three children, one wife, and a lifetime. Tell them that!"

Blackburn took a step towards Graves who bolted from the room in a panic. A vast quiet settled over the ship as the running steps of the Captain's feet retreated down the corridor. Slowly Blackburn regained control of himself. Even so his body shook with emotion, and tears fountained from his angry eyes. The quiet became oppressive, and Blackburn turned his shamed face back to the rest of the people in the room. Every eye in main engineering was locked on him behind expressions of awe. For a long time he faced them with a defiance never before seen and born before their very eyes.

A soft hand slipped onto his shoulder and Blackburn turned to face the owner. Captain Helen Foss regarded him with gentle eyes brimming with tears. "C'mon, Barney, let's get you away from this place," she said softly. She slipped an arm around his shoulders. She stood a full head higher than her Chief Engineer and she could have easily enfolded him, but she simply led him away.

Stiffly, on shaky legs, Blackburn followed her. Later he would faintly remember every member of the crew he passed standing still and silent. He would remember shocked expressions and a few tears, but he could never remember a single face.

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His life ended that day. He spent the next two months on leave on Rysa and another six at his home in Michigan, but it did no good. Mustering all the charm he could, he first sorted through the belongings he and his family had accumulated over the span of a quarter century and sold every bit of it. Returning to duty almost a year later, he discovered he had been passed over for promotion. Undeterred he applied for every position he could find and accepted the first reply.

Pluto may not have been as far away from his past as he would have liked, but it turned out to be far enough. The Pluto Space Yards orbited the tiny rock and its moon Charon in close to total darkness. The world was so small the station his office was in generated more gravity than the planetoid it orbited. The sun was a distant, cold star still bright in the sky but made alien by distance. Lit by this feeble glow, row after row of starships parked in a slow orbit sat waiting the day they were either scrapped or called to serve again. Among his more notorious charges would be the original NX-01 _Enterprise _and two of her younger namesakes. The _Excelsior _was parked nearby as if Captain Sulu had been reluctant to leave his ship in bad company. Ships of every configuration Starfleet had ever made and a few it didn't drifted still and lifeless in the gloom, and it was Blackburn's job to tend to them. Considered a dead-end assignment by every engineer in the fleet, it was a thankless, largely pointless job.

Upon arrival, his first duty was to attend to the retirement of the former administrator. Lieutenant-Commander Hatfield was a stooped, bearded man of about eighty who had held the position for the incredible tenure of fifty-seven years. While Blackburn had been warned Hatfield was a dullard and anti-social, the older man turned out to be a quiet, thoughtful man with a thin, clear voice and a host of pleasant stories to tell his replacement. Every ship in the yards had a story attached to it, and Hatfield cheerfully went through all he could think of without boring the intense man in front of him.

"The job's a golden opportunity for you, son," Hatfield explained. "With a little practice you'll be able to manage your duties in little or no time every day while you attend to more important matters."

"Like what?" Blackburn asked. He found the thin voice and his gentle inflections a soothing balm on his burning grief, and the urge to keep the man talking about anything at all was quite strong.

"That's up to you, son," Hatfield said. "This place can be as quiet as the grave most days. I've found it a wonderful setting for thoughtful contemplation."

Looking around at the small office and the darkened corridors, Blackburn knew without a doubt the place would be quiet and still enough to rival a canvass in oil paint. "What did you think about all this time?" he asked. "I mean you've been here for fifty-seven years. What takes all that time to consider?"

The old man chuckled. "Women of course! But I might add I have a passion for mathematics I've indulged till rapture many a day." He pulled out a framed parchment and announced, "I received my doctorate five years after I started here. This one's from Oxford." He looked speculatively about the room for a bit before adding, "There's another from Cambridge around her somewhere."

Blackburn was surprised. No one had discussed that at all. "How many do you have?"

Hatfield waved a thin and spotted hand at him in a don't-make-a-fuss gesture. "Only the two. Besides I've done more than tinker with the finer points of integrals and derivatives."

"Such as?"

"Did they tell you how often I return to Earth?" Hatfield asked. "In truth they never check on me out here, so I'm fairly free to wander as I please."

"So you've slacked off your duties all this time," Blackburn concluded.

"Not at all," Hatfield scoffed, "but the daily chores of this place take about five minutes, give or take. Starfleet brings stuff here to forget about it. That includes me and you."

"How appealing," Blackburn moaned.

"It's not that bad. I have a family back on Earth, and I'm proud to say all eight of my children know me better than their mother."

That brought painful memories flooding back into Blackburn's mind, and unflattering comparisons to the older man. Blackburn barely had a chance to know his children before he skipped off to the Fleet or they went off to school. His wife had been a career officer like himself, and they had trusted the upbringing of their children to the grandparents rather than put them in harm's way out in space. As a result he barely knew his sons and barely understood his daughters. He should have met this man twenty-five years ago.

Trying to bring his mind to more pleasant thoughts, Blackburn asked, "Eight children, you say?"

"My oldest is retiring from the Titan Navy in five years. My youngest will be entering the University of Naples next year."

Blackburn had to gape. "You've been busy!"

Hatfield smiled, "I've had a satisfying life out here. It's all in how you mix your time in this cold place with the warmth you need at home."

Finally Blackburn could no longer keep his amazement from showing. "Lord, I wish I'd met you when I was twenty!"

Hatfield smiled again, but it was a sad smile this time. "From what I understand of your recent history, I've no doubt you do."

Blackburn was frustrated by this turn in the conversation and stared angrily at the older man.

Hatfield regarded him with fatherly patience. "You have time out here, son. Time to think, time to hope, time to look, and time to find what you need from life. I did. And no matter how frayed your life has become in recent years, my lesson for you is that time provides all the answers you could ever need today."

"I have my doubts about that," Blackburn growled.

"So did I," Hatfield said. "Time proved me wrong, and I couldn't be more grateful."


	5. The Bad News

Problems arose the next morning for Cabrillo. The star he had selected for the hiding place, or "The Cove" as Koon had dubbed it, was shaping up finely in terms of the points he wanted to study in a star except one. Chemical spectroscopy of the orbital disk of the star was alarmingly short of water ice. He'd told the Captain there was a strong possibility of an M-class planet orbiting the star, and every thing he knew about this kind of star told him that this one would be no different. _But no water?_ Even the driest systems (Vulcan and Cardassia for instance) had visible ice spectroscopy in their outer asteroid belts and gas giants. How could such a promising candidate defy this basic rule of stars? Without water life on a humanoid level, and life on a scale needed to support them, was to put it bluntly: impossible. Life was resilient, but humanoid life required the most exacting features from its star and surrounding planets. Give or take some of the proportions of each, humanoid life required a rocky planet with an atmosphere of sufficient density to easily fuel chemical biology. There had to be large gas giants in the outer solar system to act as gravity wells and absorb or deflect detritus left over from planet formation. Also a star of a fairly narrow range of radiant energy was needed, and this one seemed ideal. Water had to be present to act as a chemical catalyst for almost every basic biological process in the body. Water had to be there! _It must be there!_

Water had to be in an atmosphere to exchange heat from the cold ground and the hot sun. Otherwise the atmosphere thickened, boiled off the volatile chemicals in the rocks under intense heat and pressure, and the surface of the planet became soft and thin. Venus was covered in volcanoes because the atmosphere was so hot and pressurized that the native rock had a very narrow temperature range before it liquefied or vaporized. On a planet like that weather was dominated my metallic snow and sulfur dust storms. Humanoid life would be reduced to ash in short order.

During planet formation, ice acted as a strange glue. As a planetoid grew, pressure caused the heavier elements to sink to the center of gravity and heat up. Ice performed two crucial functions during this stage. As it melted it acted as a lubricant for the sinking material, and contracted when it heated up to allow the rocks around it to expand. Without ice, planets were always smaller since they easily fragmented at a very early stage.

_There has to be water! There must be water! _Cabrillo thought with increasing frustration. On his telescope he could already begin to make out the lager planets around the star, and what he saw was both encouraging and baffling. Over the coarse of the morning he discovered three large gas giants and four ice giants. The ice giant label could only be used in the honorary sense in this case because while he detected methane, ammonia, and nitrogen, there wasn't a hint of water ice to be found. The fascinating readings from first ice giant showed an impossible proportion of argon and krypton in the atmosphere at temperatures that would keep those gasses in a stable liquid form under the glare of the star and ice on the night side went largely ignored as the young scientist scrambled to find the familiar signature of hydrogen and oxygen. _Where is it, dammit?_ He all but raged at all five of his telescopes.

During the afternoon, as _Pioneer _approached and the images became clearer, Cabrillo saw the faint traces of the outer belt and found no water. He did find more inert gasses in solid form out there, but while this was exotic to be sure he ignored them. He skipped dinner and worked methodically on at his telescopes. Where were the comets? Where were the asteroids of half ice and half rock? The outermost ice giant should have water by the cubic tetrameter, but it was bone dry. By the time he caught his first glimpse of the inner planets he had been at his station for two full watches and was a red-eyed, nervous wreck. _Not a damn drop! How can that be?_

The hand that slipped over his shoulder so startled him Cabrillo screamed. He whirled around and pointed his confused, bloodshot eyes at Lieutenant Locke. The familiar face took several moments to comprehend as his frustrated mind skipped a gear and all but flew apart in confusion.

"Sorry, Lieutenant," Locke said, "I was wondering where you've been all day. The Captain was wondering about the star."

Slowly his mind grasped the words. Like a man getting up after a bad fall during a marathon, he gathered his thoughts and tried to express the words. "Ah, um…" he began but his throat was so dry from disuse during the day he had to grab his drink before he could continue. "Water's missing," he finally managed.

Locke blinked. "It's in your hand Cabrillo," she said sounding unimpressed and slightly dazed.

Cabrillo shook his head and waved at the data in front of him as he tried to unlock his throat. "No, no," he wheezed, "the system's missing all the water."

Locke seemed surprised. "How can you tell?"

Cabrillo was about to drop into as full an explanation as she would ever get, but the stern look she gave him as he opened his mouth cut his courage off at the knees. "Um…" he turned back to his instruments in an attempt to gather his thoughts again. Not looking at her seemed to bolster his will enough to explain. "No comets, no spectroscopy, no H2O pushed forward under the glare of the star."

"Hmmm…" Locke mused as she scanned his data. "Show me what I should be seeing."

Cabrillo brought up the same perspective of the Sol system on one of the monitors and highlighted all the water in the spectroscopy. By way of comparison, the Sol system was dotted with specs of ice all around while the Cove system was utterly blank.

"How sensitive is your gear?" Locke asked.

"We're quite some distance off, but I should be able to see something by now," Cabrillo told her.

"Could it be buried in the form of ground water so that we couldn't detect it from space?" she asked.

"Not to this level," he replied. "Something would have shown up by now. Water isn't distributed in any set proportion about stars."

Locke shook her head, "I was afraid of that. I'll cover it with Spaulding and see if he can find something."

Cabrillo flinched. Spaulding held a dim view of his young astronomer, and second-guessed his subordinate at every opportunity. While he admired Spaulding as a scientist, he found the man riddled with all-too-human flaws. Spaulding led the scientific team that focused on pure astrometrics and physics while the team under Dr. Totem's direct control covered the biology, botany, microbiology, and social sciences. Nominally Totem was in complete control of all the scientists, but the strange, reptilian alien with the unpronounceable name and even more unpronounceable species rarely asserted control. Over the years, Spaulding had grown almost despotic (a thoughtful, kindly, friendly, and good-natured despot but still a despot) in his control of the scientists under him. In his charming way he could discourage, redirect, or even shade the findings of the data presented to the Captain and Starfleet. Cabrillo knew the man was brilliant, but Spaulding's motives sometimes rang a little off key. Presenting this information to the man might be a quick way to be discounted and disgraced in front of the whole crew. Cabrillo knew Spaulding hated shouldering blame and would sidestep it at every opportunity quickly and flagrantly. While David was willing to shoulder the blame for this incomprehensible turn of events, he feared Spaulding would make an example of him so stark he'd never have credibility again.

Locke noticed the younger man recoil from her suggestion and decided to probe a little into the reason for it. "Something bothers you, Lieutenant?" she asked.

Suddenly at a loss for words he struggled to overcome his fear of Locke, or more specifically: the authority Locke represented. After seven years of crushing blows to his pride and no emotional outlet to vent his frustrations, the young man was almost completely broken. He lacked the nerve to face Locke in any way that might upset or contradict her, and this was by her unwitting design. "Uh," he mumbled, "we should, um…" he trailed off as a knot in his chest and stomach tightened to the point of near excruciating pain.

"You better speak up, David," a new voice said from behind Locke. "She asked you a question."

Cabrillo and Locke shifted their gaze to the newcomer. To their mutual surprise, Kree stepped into the planetarium. Cabrillo had never seen her in here and he gaped at her in complete astonishment.

"You _have_ taken a shine to him," Locke laughed at the Andorian.

Kree assumed an imperious tilt to her expression and stood a little straighter in front of Locke. "If I want him," Kree said with sarcastic intensity, "he will be mine." She walked over to Cabrillo and traced a blue finger languidly over his brow, down his nose and under his chin where she deftly closed his open mouth. "I know he cannot resist me."

Locke laughed. "You should see yourself, Cabrillo," she said between her guffaws. She turned to Kree, "Isn't he adorable?"

"Irresistible," Kree agreed sarcastically then added, "close your mouth, David."

Cabrillo's mouth shut again with a click.

This time Locke hooted with laughter and Kree erupted in giggles. Cabrillo sat blushing in his seat embarrassed, confused, and miserable. He felt like crying. This wasn't fair! They were making fun of him when he was trying to be serious. He felt younger and dumber than at any time of his life, and all they could do was laugh at him. Did he deserve this?

Angrily he barked at them the first thing that came to mind, "But there's no water at the Cove!"

Locke kept laughing, but Kree snapped her head about with a look of alarm. "What?"

"Not a trace of ice, vapor, liquid… nothing!" he said.

"That's impossible!" Kree snapped. While her knowledge of astronomy was not as vast as David's, but her experience navigating star ships was very clear on this point. Hydrogen and oxygen were common elements in any system, water could be purged or chemically broken down from planet to planet, but no system in the galaxy was barren of it. She looked at the data David was explaining to Locke as the other woman gradually calmed down. With gradually increasing alarm she had to agree with him that there was no water there to be found. "Impossible!" she hissed.

"Is it really that rare?" Locke asked. "I mean, this just changes the class or worlds we will find there, doesn't it?"

Ignoring Locke for the moment, Kree asked Cabrillio, "Have you shown this to Spaulding?"

Cabrillo flinched again by way of answering.

Kree pounded the back of his chair with a frustrated slap. "Go tell the Captain, David. Do it now! I'll get Spaulding up to the ready room in a moment." Kree spun around to face Locke. "Inform Commander Okuma about this. I'm not sure what this means."

Though Locke and Kree were of the same rank, Cabrillo was Locke's subordinate to command. Locke was about to point this out to Kree when she noticed the serious cast to her expression. "You're serious?" she asked.

"Quite serious, Carrie," Kree said. "We don't have much time to figure this out. We might need Forte and Gordon there, but Okuma must decide that."

Convinced at last, Locke bolted from the room. Cabrillo couldn't seem to master his shaking limbs for the moment. Kree spun around and hauled him to his feet. He was a head taller and a fair bit heavier than the little Andorian, but she pitched him upright with astonishing ease. "Get moving, David!" she ordered.

"But I…" he began to protest. He couldn't go to the Captain without authorization from Locke or Spaulding. They had drummed it into him for years that he was not to poke his head outside his planetarium without their expressed permission.

Kree would hear none of it. "Get moving!" she ordered again. When he simply stared at her she softened her expression a bit and said, "I'll explain what I was doing down here later, David, now go tell the Captain!"

A sudden, confused, irrational beam of hope flooded Cabrillo's heart. Was she here to see him? Did he have the prospect of someone to talk to after all these lonely years? Did she consider him a friend? The mere notion got his exhausted mind to work his stiff limbs up to a full run before he reached to corridor.

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"None?" Koon asked in disbelief. He'd listened to Cabrillo's evidence in full detail along with the rest of his senior officers and Dr. Spaulding. Hurst and Spaulding were busy confirming Cabrillo's data with other sensor packages, but there really wasn't any doubt at this stage. Spaulding had looked downright jubilant at the discovery, while Hurst had visibly paled. Nothing so strange had ever been seen in all of Federation exploration, and Spaulding was eager to see it up close. Hurst on the other hand knew what they needed to do to _Pioneer_ at "The Cove" and he was watching a great many hopes being dashed by this news.

Around the table, the news settled in like a sudden death. Okuma's ordinarily determined expression, melted into crestfallen shock. Forte stared at Cabrillo with unseeing eyes. Kree and Locke looked around the table in a vain search for hope and confidence.

But the hardest hit of all was Commander Gordon. After a few moments to absorb the news, he clutched at his hair in frustration and then slammed his fists down on the table. "No," he said in a small voice. It sounded like the cry of a child before the first blow of a beating.

"Could the water be underground or shrouded in some way to our sensors?" Koon asked.

"Impossible," a new voice said with stark authority.

Koon turned to face the door as Dr. Totem walked in. The reptile ordinarily had a smooth, glistening sheen to his demeanor, but now Totem looked rough and jagged. With a bit of surprise, Koon noticed the senior scientist's scales standing on end.

Totem walked up to Cabrillo and reviewed the data. "The astronomer is right. There is no water in this system." He turned to Gordon and asked, "How much can you replicate?"

Gordon looked up from his spinning thoughts and stared angrily at Totem. His cockney accent thickened as his emotions swelled in his chest, "Now you blokes want me to wat'a the bloody Sahara with a bloody gard'n 'ose!"

"Not at all, Commander," Totem said calmly. "But in an experimental sense we can…"

"Oh, PISS OFF!" Gordon shouted at the scientist. "I've got enough on me bloody…"

Koon cut him off, "Calm down, Eddie," he soothed, "Totem's just a little ahead of the rest of us."

"I've a ship to rebuild!" Gordon shouted rising to his feet. "I can't waste my time on this…"

"Sit down, Chief!" Koon barked.

Gordon, shaking with rage, clamped his mouth shut and slowly sunk back into his seat.

Koon took a deep breath and gathered his thoughts before he continued. "For those of you who don't know we will have to put the crew off the ship in some manner or another while we are working on it." Heads all around the table snapped to face him as he announced this. "Eddie and I have covered the timetables, and this is bar far the best way."

"Bloody right it is," Gordon grumbled.

"What this means in practical terms is: we need a habitable world to stay on for a number of months," Koon continued.

"Months?" Cabrillo gasped.

"You think a broken beast like this ole' gal can be tricked out in a weekend, kid?" Gordon sneered. "We've got enough work to keep a crew five times this size busy for half a year ahead of us."

"Another thing the Chief isn't saying is that the warp core is failing," Koon announced calmly.

Stillness fell over the room. For one heartbeat, and then another nobody so much as drew breath. Eyes stared fixedly at Koon all the way around the table. Kree and Hurst had suspected as much, but everybody else besides Koon and Gordon felt the full shock of the matter.

After a long silence, Gordon growled, "It's the wrong time to tell them that, Captain."

"Failing?" Spaulding blurted. "How can a warp core fail?"

"Quite easily I assure you, sir," Gordon announced matter-of-factly. "It is only a matter of time now."

"How long do we have?" Totem asked.

"Three weeks," Gordon said. "After that I'll have to shut it down or dump it."

"But we need that!" Locke protested.

"How true," Gordon said slowly.

"Can we fix it?" Okuma asked, "We're not going to be stranded out here are we?"

"The Chief and I are working on the preliminaries of that problem," Koon said calmly. "For now I want this to remain in engineering."

"That can't last," Okuma said flatly. "The rest of the crew will have to be enlisted to sort this out and soon."

Koon shifted his gaze to Gordon effectively turning the meeting over to him. "We are in the design stages of a ship wide refit," Gordon explained. "Most of what we intend to do should be mapped out by tonight or tomorrow. We'll need crew input from the other departments in short order when we begin dissemination."

"You could have warned me!" Okuma snapped. "I'll have to shuffle the crew around for…"

"We don't have to move anybody until we are ready," Gordon cut her off. "Cove is a few days away. I intended to cover this with you when I knew more."

"You're keeping me out of the loop!" Okuma shouted.

"I didn't have much more to add to what we discussed last night!" Gordon said hotly.

"Sam, Eddie," Koon said sternly, "If you want to bicker I'll send everyone else out, but I don't think it'll move things along."

"But I…" Okuma protested.

Koon cut her off, "I'll tolerate disagreement but not pointless shouting matches, Commander." His voice had gained that unfamiliar steel again. "Chief Gordon has things to do and he can't be wasting his time telling us about it fifty times an hour." He turned to Gordon and added, "And don't get the impression you're doing this alone, Chief. I'm in no mood for you to start griping about your issues. I need solutions not complaints."

Gordon tensed to deliver a rebuke, but sunk back into his chair with a tired heave. "Sorry, Captain, one too many cups of coffee I guess." He turned to Okuma and added, "I'll have a full report on your desk soon."

"Send me the plans and someone who can tell me what we'll need to complete them," Okuma said.

"I'll go over it with you myself," Gordon offered.

Koon shook his head, "Get some rest, Chief. That's an order."

Gordon nodded. "I'll send Lieutenant Blackburn to cover things with you," he said to Okuma.

Koon gave a curt nod and turned back to Cabrillo. "Are there habitable planets around this star?"

Hurst answered, "I detect a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere on the fourth planet."

Cabrillo shook his head. "Not exactly the ideal place to live," he said ruefully.

Hurst was surprised, "What's wrong with it?"

"The gravity of the planet is one and a half times that of normal," Cabrillo explained. "Also: that far away from the sun means we'll have to endure hurricane force winds on the surface every day."

Hurst checked his data and made a clucking noise, "You're sure? I don't see it in the readings."

"It's simple physics. The size of the planet dictates a specific gravity, and the intensity of the sunlight in proportion to the density of the atmosphere provide a coefficient for surface sheer," Cabrillo said. "I can see both in my telescopes and run the figures. The long range sensors will only tell you what they can qualify with observable data."

"I see," Hurst said thoughtfully. "Can you make out the second and third planet in any detail yet?"

"By tomorrow morning, yes," Cabrillo answered. "They are currently behind the star. Our line of sight will be open by then."

"Do they look promising?" Gordon asked.

Cabrillo gave a mighty sigh. "In terms of their calculated size: yes. The second planet is about a fourth the size of Earth and the third planet is within a couple hundred kilometers in diameter of Earth."

"But you don't know if they have atmospheres," Gordon pointed out.

"Not yet."

"Can we change coarse to find a more suitable system?" Kree asked.

"No," Gordon said flatly. "As it is, dropping out of warp will be tricky at best. At the very least we're looking at a day or two in this system while I patch together the core again."

"Can we replicate enough water for our use once we've stopped?" Okuma asked.

"Not with _Pioneer's _power. We'll have to rely on the shuttles' replicators once I shut the main core down," Gordon said.

"That should do," Okuma said sounding relieved.

Nobody suspected what was in store for them.

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"I am Lord Heartstock of the clan Bith," the prisoner announced arrogantly.

"Fine, Heartstock," Speer said for the fourth time. "I'm bored with that tidbit already. Conversation will stagnate if you don't engage in it," he added sourly.

Heartstock paced restlessly behind the security field. He kept his eyes locked with Speer's one good eye the entire time in a fierce expression. Speer had given up on the game half an hour ago.

It had been like this from the moment Heartstock revived. The pacing, glaring, arrogant alien would only give his name and clan, and on occasion demand to be let out. From a physical point of view, Heartstock was an impressive specimen. Indeed the alien towered over Speer and the guard. The hands were massive, the arms the diameter of chair seats and long as the full height of some of the women aboard. Short, powerful legs joined to a massive body trunk any Klingon would envy. Speer remembered just then that a Klingon had joined Starfleet about the same time he had. He now wished that man were here now. The physical strength of the alien was beyond any human scale, and if Heartstock somehow managed to free himself there wasn't anybody to stand in his way toe-to-toe.

But somehow M'rath had done that very thing, Speer thought with stunned disbelief. How? Speer stood a head taller, benched pressed half as much more than the Romulan, and yet the man in the other cell had come close to crippling this massive predator with his bare hands. Speer wouldn't dare risk an encounter against this creature.

Speer clutched at the patch over his eye as a hot poker of pain lanced through his skull. The eye could be saved, Dr. Fahdlan had told him, but in the days to come he would wish it couldn't. His muscles spasmed down the side where the flesh had been burned away and then regenerated. The new tissue was winding itself around old tissue and the older stuff was throbbing from the burns he had received. It was like having old, frayed hemp ropes sliding their rough braids under his skin against his bones and muscles. It was proving to be distracting to say the least. Dr. Fahdlan promised the sensation would pass about the same time his eye healed. Speer could only say it was excruciating.

"I think our guest deserves a break, Commander," M'rath said from inside his cell. The Romulan had remained silent since Koon left, ostensibly to consider the Captain's offer. Speer had ignored him for the most part, but when he looked into the cell he noticed the man thoughtfully composed in his cot. On the few occasions M'rath had met his gaze, Speer was relieved to see an expressions that mirrored his own namely frustration and exasperation. M'rath listened in on the entire interrogation of Heartstock with diligent attention, and the Romulan appeared to share Speer's dislike of the alien.

_Hell, I need a break!_ Speer thought but did not say.

M'rath moved towards the security field and spoke with deliberate scorn. "I doubt we have much to learn from this kind of filth."

Speer stared at M'rath. What was he up to?

M'rath heaped another insult casually upon the first. "The weakling deserves a little coddling to keep him from pouting."

Heartstock crashed hard into the bulkhead that separated the two cells so hard the security consol trembled and both Speer and the guard reset their footing. Again the huge alien crashed into the bulkhead and this time he succeeded in denting the duratanium. Unsatisfied, he beat at the security field with rapid, massive blows that rattled the whole room.

Speer was about to take some action to sedate Heartstock when he noticed M'rath silently cautioning him to do nothing. Speer glanced back at the guard who was carefully monitoring the field stress limits. The guard had already bumped the field intensity to force ten. From his vantage point in front of the consol, Speer could see the stress meters bound and jump like mad waves on the ocean. Heartstock packed a detonation in his fist, and he was demonstrating it to a shocked audience.

After a time Heartstock stopped his flailing about his cell and resumed his pacing from one side to the next. He glared at Speer and the guard with undisguised hatred, and neither man outside his cell had a doubt the bulky alien would tear them limb from limb if he managed to escape.

"Temper, temper!" M'rath scolded. "Tantrums are so unbecoming to a Noble."

"When I get out of here, you little insect, I'll…" Heartstock hissed.

Speer interrupted him, "But you're not getting out, Mr. Heartstock. So it would be best if you cooperated."

M'rath rolled his eyes and made a chopping motion across his neck with his hand. He wanted Speer to shut up before the alien stopped talking again.

Speer, unfamiliar to this kind of interrogation, blabbed onward with an irritated look at the Romulan. "You're options are exactly nil in my brig, Heartstock, and if you want that to change you'll shape up."

M'rath not only rolled his eyes but his whole head this time. He threw up his hands, and marched back to his cot where he collapsed. Shaking his head and rubbing his brow as if a headache had just bloomed behind his eyes, he silently marveled at the man. How did Speer get the idea he was cut out for counterintelligence work? In M'rath's estimation the man lacked a certain talent for oblique thinking. Speer was a linear thinker and he charged straight at his goal no matter how fast it ran away from him. While that kind of drive was admirable in its own way, the intelligence business was anything if not a looping, sidelong, torturously circuitous mess. No amount of simply banging away at a question would yield an answer until the facts were obsolete. No wonder he had duped them for so long. Pitting his extensive skills against Speer's methodology was like presenting advanced quantum mechanics to a newborn.

About then Speer's com badge chirped to life. "Okuma to Speer," the disembodied voice said.

Speer acknowledged the call and waited for his instructions.

"Report to the Captain's ready room," Okuma ordered.

"On my way," Speer said and marched out of the room.

The guard stared nervously at Heartstock as the silence deepened. The man began to pale after a minute or two and began pointedly ignoring the big alien.

"Reading something, Lieutenant?" M'rath asked idly. With Speer gone he might yet tease a fact or two out of Heartstock. He needed to engage him somehow. Idle talk was the best way to do it.

The guard brightened, "The Aniad by Virgil," he said. "The Iliad is a fine poem, but I always found Latin to be more lyrical," he added.

"I've read it," M'rath agreed, "the translation into Romulan is spectacular." He quoted a few lines in his mother tongue of the epic poem and discovered he remembered far more of it than he realized. He quoted stanza after stanza until a full five minutes had passed.

The guard was surprised, "That is impressive. I didn't realize the language was so…" he searched for the word.

"Backward!" Heartstock barked in disgust. "And if I may fit a word in edgewise next to this guttural gibberish let me add the modifiers 'unpleasant' and 'tedious' to the list."

"I was going to say rhythmic," the guard said sheepishly.

M'rath was grinning like a shark inside his cell. This could go well after all.

"What was all that pointless wind about anyway?" Heartstock asked.

"A battle between heroes," M'rath said. "One fights for family and love."

"And the other?" Heartstock grumbled.

M'rath almost giggled but managed to keep his delight out of his voice. "Fighting is all he knows."

"Truly?" Heartstock mused. "Sounds like an accurate description of my entire clan."

M'rath looked excitedly at the guard who sensibly kept a neutral expression and his silence. He noticed the younger man discreetly set the room surveillance to record the conversation. "I'm sure you wouldn't understand," he said. "It's a story about human nature. I must confess it's more than a little puzzling to me and I know it all."

"Heroes are nothing more than hunters amongst a great sea of prey," Heartstock explained.

"Heroes serve others," M'rath pointed out.

"I'm sure these heroes you spoke of served themselves first. Glory and honor waits for no one," Heartstock said.

"And you would know something about that?" M'rath asked skeptically.

"More than you can fathom with your gibberish," Heartstock said defensibly. "I can tell you of heroes for the ages."

M'rath almost danced a jig in his cell. _Paydirt!_ He exulted.

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After the meeting with his senior officers and scientists had cleared out, Koon was surprised to find Lieutenant Tynee waiting patiently outside. After a brief word with Commander Okuma she and Sam walked back to him. "A moment of your time, Captain?" the austere Vulcan asked.

Koon knew what this had to be about, but he kept his expression innocent. Speer had been too preoccupied to arrest Tynee and M'rath had suggested that she be allowed to present her own case in her own time. Since there was nowhere to go for the Romulan agent, Speer had reluctantly agreed to set the matter aside for a time. Koon hadn't expected her to present herself the next day after her partner's arrest since Speer had kept that affair as quiet as he could, but here she was. "Come on in," he said and gestured her in.

Okuma took a seat next to Koon while Tynee waited for the door to close behind her before she made so much as a peep.

"What is it, Lieutenant?" Koon asked.

"I'm Romulan," she blurted.

Koon stared at her for a long moment. He assumed an unimpressed expression and shared a glance with Okuma of mild incredulity. Shifting his gaze back to Tynee he asked, "And?" drawing the word out for effect.

Tynee's iron composer slipped a cog. She gaped at Koon not able to understand what he meant. "I'm a traitor to the Federation," she added.

Okuma took a Koon's lead and asked her another short, open-ended question, "So?"

Tynee looked fit to split with exasperation. She looked from Koon to Okuma and back in disbelief. "Doesn't that bother you?" she asked aloud before answering her own doubts with a horrified, "He told you, didn't he."

"No he didn't," Okuma said casually.

"But it wasn't a strain of imagination to assume you were an agent, and we thought you might have something to say for yourself," Koon added.

Tynee seemed to deflate as the news struck home, "May I sit down?" she asked looking faint. The rollicking emotional shift in her mind had her head spinning.

"Please," Koon said motioning to the couch across from Okuma and him.

Tynee gingerly plopped into the couch as if the thing were made of crystal and prone to shatter under her weight. "I knew he would break someday," she said to herself. She stared out the ports at the starlines passing the ship and muttered, "Good!"

"Does that mean we have your full support as a member of this crew, Mr. Tynee?" Okuma asked.

"By all that is holy, yes!" Tynee said. "But may I beg a condition from you?"

Koon suspected what that would be, but Okuma eyed the other woman suspiciously.

"I want private quarters. I don't care if they are small and crude, but I never want to live with that man again," she said more to herself than to the other two.

"Is he that bad?" Okuma asked.

"No," Tynee said quickly, "But together we are." She let that comment settle in for a moment before adding, "I was plotting to kill him later this year."

"Vicious!" Koon said. "Don't suppose you'd be willing to tell us why?"

"I wanted to be free of him," Tynee told him. "I wanted to be free of Romulus. I wanted to be as free as the rest of you."

Koon shared another glance with Okuma. M'rath didn't present much of a problem to security since his former post was under Dr. Totem and his scientist. For all the success the agent M'rath had garnered aboard _Pioneer_ the scientist M'rath was an equally brilliant microbiologist and virologist. If he went back to his duties this instant, only minor changes in security would permit the man to proceed almost without a hitch. Tynee by contrast was a weapons designer. While grossly underused during much of the past seven years, the coming refit demanded much of her. The weapons could be refitted and installed without her, but both Koon and Okuma agreed it would take a great deal longer and increased the potential for design flaws by an order of magnitude. They needed Tynee, but they were far from comfortable with that option now. Even if they expressed a flippant disregard for her allegiance in the beginning of the interview, they were not so foolish as to think she was completely trustworthy. Koon's appeals to M'rath not withstanding, Okuma found the whole idea of keeping the man anywhere but inside a cell alarming. She sided with Speer on this matter in the opinion neither of the Romulans could be trusted. On another ship a brief background check of all Vulcans would be in order. _Pioneer _apparently left the Federation with only these two posing Romulans which made the search for more conspirators easier but still difficult. Extensive protein therapy could mimic the physiology of a human, Targ, Bolian, Chits, Mottir, Hone, Betazed, or Bajoran. Only Lieutenant Kree and her elaborate Andorian physiology plus Dr. Totem's unpronounceable species couldn't be duplicated. Therefore Speer was waiting for Dr. Fahdlan to finish up with the casualties to cover the possibilities.

Tynee waited patiently for her fate to be judged. She liked Koon and Okuma despite her now abandoned mission. She liked almost everybody aboard _Pioneer_ she freely admitted to herself. She liked even that overbearing boss of hers Totem for his quick grasp of the facts and clear minded judgment. In her heart of hearts she admitted a particular liking for Commander Gordon whom had always made it difficult for her to keep her Vulcan composure with his dry humor and unaffected manner. She did not like M'rath anymore, and that more than anything had brought her here to face her punishment.

"How long have you and M'rath been together?" Okuma asked.

"Too long," Tynee admitted, "Forty-one years."

Koon made a surprised smirk; "Damn!" he said admiringly, "you'll have to tell me the trick of that."

Tynee allowed a flash of annoyance to the surface of her calm composure and snapped, "Just tell me what you'll do with me!"

Koon's expression softened. "That depends on what you want for yourself now. We could lock you away until a Starfleet Judge Advocate could hear your case, but I don't know when that will come to pass. That means thirty years or more in my brig since treason proceedings can't be held in absentia, or so Mr. Speer tells me."

"It would be better than thirty years more with him," Tynee grumbled.

"I've offered M'rath a deal which I feel is no longer applicable," Koon continued. "He was to turn you in for a new place on the roster."

Tynee glared at Koon with contempt. The life of an agent or mole was one of skirting and confronting betrayal, but it was no less painful to bear it.

"I left him this morning considering the offer," Koon said. "Then you arrived in my ready room."

Tynee immediately grasped what Koon was telling her. Since she had come of her own free will, he was willing to be lenient. That left some more attractive options ahead of her but no less grim in her estimation. House arrest or strict supervision at best came to mind.

"I'm inclined to interpret your action as an act of faith," Koon said, "you and M'rath will remain part of the crew. Commander Okuma will see to it you are assigned new quarters."

Tynee was stunned, "But… but…" she stammered.

"You're a traitor?" Koon asked completing her thoughts. "M'rath told me as much himself, but I'm short handed and I can't spare you."

"Romulus is far behind us, Tynee," Okuma said, "but so is the Federation. The Captain is willing to leave them behind us so long as you know that your loyalty is to the survival of this crew. Will you agree to those terms?"

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Tynee staggered through the rest of that day in a daze. Okuma had asked her to stay out of engineering and the weapons lab until a thorough review of her activities could be completed. That meant she had only to move her things out of her quarters into her new room. Her new roommate worked another watch so there was little chance she would ever see the woman. In her shocked state of mind, she had forgotten to register her roommate's name. She was assured her roommate would be told before the rest of the crew. After her things were unpacked and situated around the room to her liking, she had nothing else to do.

She thought of going to ten forward, but then remembered the compartment was still locked off with flare damage breaching the hull. She thought of going to the science department, but her lab was only next door so she decided against doing that as well. The galley came to mind, but a lot of tired people were in there at all hours of the day, and she judged it might not be prudent to loiter around them while they were so busy.

Isolated, lonely, and with an uncertain future ahead of her, she allowed her iron grip on her emotions to crack. The tears first traced elegant lines down her face of exquisite relief. Soon tears all but fountained out of her as the pent up emotions of her life found their release.

Carrie Locke found her that way five hours later. Her first reaction to seeing a weeping woman in her room was one of surprise. "Tynee?" she asked. The sheer scale of the other woman's grief was shocking. She'd never seen anybody so unstrung. The Romulan woman sobbed in great heaves that shook the very floor. Her bawling could be heard down the corridor it was so loud. The linen on the cot she was to use was soaked from top to bottom with tears.

"I'm… sorry," Tynee sniffed. "It's just so good to be free."

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Later that night, Samantha Okuma stretched out on her bed and tried to sleep. Although her body ached and her mind was tired, she could not find the oblivion of sleep. Her mind stuck on two important facts. Koon had shut her out of the engineering loop and he was keeping two confessed Romulan agents aboard over her protests. To say she was irked was an understatement. Her damaged pride fanned the flames of her outrage until sleep was impossible. Irritated, she rose and threw on a robe. Peyter would have a piece of her mind before this day was done, she declared to herself.

As she stepped into the corridor the smell of something delicious wafted past her. Her stomach growled so loud that a passing crewman turned an amused eye her way. A cramp in her belly insisted she investigate this pleasant aroma so she put off her chore with Koon until she could get some food. Her quarters were on the same deck as the galley so the sight of her in her pajamas and robe was an ordinary one after seven years. The source of the delicious smell was a surprising sight on the other hand and about a dozen people crowded around the kitchen chatting amiably.

At the stoves, wearing an apron and wielding a long handled ladle was Lieutenant Darin Forte. "Ah, Commander!" he said cheerfully over a steaming pot, "I knew the proper bait would draw a fine catch." He held up a huge platter in one hand and a steaming ladle in the other. "I have egg rolls and sesame chicken with rice," he offered over wide smile.

Sam's stomach tried and failed to make her snatch one of the egg rolls off the platter gobble it down but only by a hair. Instead she picked up a plate and allowed Darin to dish out servings.

"There's more if you want it, Commander," Darin said then turned around to the guffaws of everyone in the room. Apparently he wasn't wearing anything under his apron and his exposed ass flashed into full view.

Sam almost dropped her plate in surprise. The crowd around her seemed oblivious to the long list of regulations Darin was breaking, and it was her job to enforce them. But despite that fact a small part of her wanted to stare at Darin's bum for as long as he would allow it. It is often said that familiarity breeds contempt, but a lesser appreciated aspect is the blindness that implies. The people around her had known her so long that they entirely failed to notice her fixed stare for what it was: a sudden flash of lust. Her mind seized on this with a hunger rivaling that of her stomach before.

Before she could be exposed for all to see, she turned on her heel and plopped down at a table. She was so distracted she forgot utensils and stared at her food without seeing it for a full minute. Finally she picked up an egg roll and began to munch on it. The flavor of the roll revived her somewhat and her stomach settled down happy to accept any morsel she sent its way.

A moment later Darin appeared at her table with an apologetic stoop in his stride. "Sorry, Commander, I lost a bet with the guys over there so I had to…" he motioned at the apron that was preserving his modesty from this angle. He placed some utensils and a napkin next to her on the table and asked, "Are you going to write me up for this?"

Sam didn't look at him. "I should," she said. She picked up a fork and sampled the chicken. Like the egg rolls it was excellent. "Did you cook this, Darin?" she asked.

Forte seemed surprised by her change in the subject. "Well…" he almost stammered out the words, "yes I did."

"You're a very good cook," she said truthfully.

There was a long silence between them before Forte mustered the courage to ask, "Does that mean you don't mind?"

Sam didn't answer. Part of the reason was that this was very close to a fantasy she harbored secretly for the man. For years she had admired the handsome and endlessly cheerful helmsman secure in the knowledge that Starfleet regulations forbade any chance of her pursuing the relationship. But having the man serving her and asking for her approval clad only in an apron and his good nature was almost too sadistic to bear. Confused emotions and long dormant desires welled up in her and shaped her selfish answer to Forte's question. "Only if you show me everything you know about how to make this later tomorrow."

Oblivious to the undertone of Okuma's condition, Forte beamed an innocent smile. "I learned a lot from my girlfriend back in Hong Kong," he said, "These are just a couple of recipes she taught me."

Sam felt a pang of virulent jealousy when the word "girlfriend" met her ears, but she quickly dismissed it. _I'm not even supposed to be scheming for his affections,_ she told herself, _having him all to myself is too much to ask for._ "Think of something simple for the time being," she told Darin. "We'll work up to something more elaborate as we go."

"I'll look forward to it," Forte said with a charming, utterly guileless twinkle in his eye. "Tomorrow around dinner time then?"

"I'll come get you when it's convenient," she said as tonelessly as she could manage. She didn't want to sound sultry or seductive in front of the crew and expose herself to the embarrassment.

Forte backed away from the table and vanished into the kitchen again to the muttered jokes and laughs of the others.

Sam sat quietly and ate her serving thoughtfully. If Koon found out what she had in mind, he had every right to shut down her plans and humiliate her. On the other hand, Koon was ignoring a catalog of regulations by keeping the Romulans as part of the crew. He had also slighted her by keeping her out of the loop with Gordon earlier today. She had the leverage to block Koon's discipline, but the question in her mind was whether to be preemptive and announce her intentions to Koon before she made a move or try to hide it form him.

_You know better than that, girl,_ she scolded herself, _how many rumors have you ferreted out over the last seven years? This ship is too small for secrets to last long._ Having decided on her plan of action, she finished her food and marched over to Koon's quarters. She would wring his neck if he tried to deny her what she deserved! She had been a loyal supporter of the man from the beginning, and he owed her more than this trifling breach of regulations. She wasn't sure she could function much longer without someone for herself, and Peyter would just have to accept that.

Standing before Peyter's door, many defiant arguments bayed for blood should he as much as urge her to be cautious. In her mind she picked apart his arguments methodically almost vengefully. She imagined her Captain shrinking from her as though lashed with a whip and color draining from his face under the onslaught of her reason.

She rang the door chime.

There was a long pause as she waited for him to respond. As the wait grew, doubts assaulted her with festive energy. She was about to blackmail her superior officer into allowing her to pursue a subordinate. How was that supposed to work? What kind of bonehead logic brought her to this action? Koon would deny her and bust her down to an Ensign before he allowed her to manipulate him that way. What if he had designs on her? He has kissed her before the Flare Jump after all and he might have done so with the desire to have her in mind. He might insist she attend to him before allowing an affair with Forte. He might…

The door opened. Peyter had clearly been sleeping before she came calling, and he took a moment to focus on her. After a few owlish blinks and a rub of his face, he muttered, "Something wrong, Sam?"

Doubts flooded her again and she had the childish urge to bolt back to her room and hide under the covers. She regretted ever having come here tonight, but her disciplined mind forced her to march ahead with her argument. "You shut me out of the loop today," she said sidestepping the larger reason for her being at his door. "I should have known what was going on from the instant you found out."

Koon shook his head blearily. "Do we really have to discuss this now, Commander?"

"It's important we get this settled, Captain," she declared.

Koon nodded wearily and motioned for her to come in. He asked for a pitcher of water from his replicator and took a mighty swig from a glass before settling into a chair at his desk. Sam entered his room and waited for the door to close before she settled into a chair opposite him.

"Things are going to get hectic around here, Commander," Koon said, "I really don't understand why you're going to the mat over this issue."

"Because we're a team, and I need to know these things," she insisted.

Koon nodded again. "This was an oversight not a professional slight, Sam," he said.

"You still could have told me," she pointed out. "And you ignored my advice regarding the Romulans as well."

Koon was too tired to roll his eyes and simply stared at her. "We're short handed."

"They're traitors!" she said.

"To Romulus, not us," Koon said gently.

"How can we trust them?" she asked.

Koon sat back and took another long pull at his glass. "What's the real reason you're here, Sam?" he asked.

Thrown off guard Okuma had the unnerving notion Peyter could see right through her. "What does that mean?" she asked tartly.

"In all the years I've known you, I've never seen you cover dead issues," Koon said reasonably. "It's something I've always admired in you."

Sam looked away uncertain how to proceed.

"What's on your mind, Sam?" Koon asked. "I'm here to help if I can."

"I'm…" she almost blurted the whole thing out to him in a rush, but she stopped herself and struggled to compose her thoughts. "You've been breaking Starfleet protocols all day, Pete," she said. "I was wondering if…" she trailed off.

"Are you asking me to skirt another one, Commander?" Koon asked reverting to her title.

"Y-yes," Sam answered hesitantly. "I don't think it will cause problems down the way."

Koon considered her answer carefully for a long time before continuing. "Feeling lonely, Sam?" he asked.

Okuma didn't answer, but she felt her cheeks burn and she couldn't meet his eye.

Koon smiled, "Darin's a lucky man."

Okuma's eyes snapped back up to stare at Peyter. "You can't know…"

Koon waved a dismissive hand at her, "You really don't know how much you talk about that boy do you?" he chuckled.

Samantha's mouth opened and shut in utter shock as she struggled to voice her indignant outrage. How did he know? How dare he know! Something deep in her feminine center screamed bitter curses at Peyter. Anger mixed with shame made her want to claw his twinkling eyes out of his head. He had known all along!

Koon leaned forward and said in a fatherly tone, "I know he thinks of you."

Surprise, hopeful and giddy washed away her anger. "He does?" she asked.

"Yes," Koon said, "and I'm not one to stand in the way of such things." Indeed he wasn't. In fact Koon knew that bearing down on such things would erode the will of the crew just as fast as the confusion rampant promiscuity would cause. He'd learned that while in the Klingon Empire.

Klingons were many things, but they were the most genuine personalities Koon had ever come across. The urge, nay the cultural decree, to be defiantly oneself and proclaim it to the universe in uncompromising terms held a great appeal to the young Lieutenant Koon once he recognized it for what it was. The kind of slow, cold regret humans endured out of social necessity was unknown in Klingon circles. Men roared their desires at females, while the females openly scoffed at the weak contenders and berated the bad manners of the favored suitors. This kind of bellicose interaction between the sexes was at first alarming to watch, but Koon found the charm of it later on. Klingons mated without pretense, and splits could be bitter but very simple by human standards. Klingons tended to laugh about their romantic adventures rather than burden themselves with the pain from them. Koon had seen jilted lovers act with surprising good humor towards each other. As one Klingon friend had told him, "The joke is on us in the end. We cannot be complete without each other and yet we cannot stand to be whole together. There's no sense in making a secret of it. Why not flaunt your flaws in front of all so that others may learn a lesson and laugh about it? Surely it's no different for you?"

Over the years he spent on Q'onos, Koon discovered how fine a thing it was to let pretenses drop. Klingons were comfortable with themselves and each other to such a degree that their needs always seemed to be met. One man would make a bitter complaint to his fellows and they immediately launched into the reasons he allowed such a thing to happen to him citing their own foolish adventures of a similar nature to much guffaws and hoots. Despite this outwardly callous behavior, Koon had seen a deep feeling for the misery around them. They reveled in their misery so that they could not feel the shame of it. When that misery was of a romantic nature, the response was alarmingly swift and brutal. Often lonely Klingon men would be dragged to an ill tempered female by his laughing friends so that they might make a joint appeal for the man. It was a sign of weakness on the lonely man's part to come to this point, but invariably he was embraced by the female presented to him. It was bawdy, rowdy, violent, and sidestepped larger romantic issues (to which all Klingons professed great knowledge and skill) but the man's loneliness would be cured.

By contrast, the human tendency to retreat from forays into romance seemed downright ignorant to Klingons. "They know what you want, human," one of his friends had told him, "don't fool yourself into thinking you can hide it from them. We may mystify females in many ways, but not love. They are the undisputed masters of that arena of conflict." After a time he found being jilted by the women he sought better than enduring the longing he felt for them. Soon he was being just as bawdy, just as bellicose, just as rudely forward as the rest of his Klingon friends. He never did get anywhere with Klingon women, but he found he could laugh just as hard about his loss as the rest of his friends after being refused.

The affect this had on Klingon crews was striking. They attacked their lives as a group which made them very cohesive day to day. They made their arguments in the open and settled them at once instead of coming back to them again and again. They hated being wrong, and the public exposure of this flaw was the one downside of this equation. But on the other hand they did not hesitate to openly express their shame. In turn, other Klingons found it deeply painful to witness the shame of others.

The human habit of retreating from all that and sometimes reveling in shame and doubt may have made for polite social interaction, but it often developed divided motives among supposedly close crews. Klingons put their whole soul into their lives. Humans rarely managed a faint investment of themselves into the lives of others. The habit of hoarding one's soul from prying eyes was proven to be just as degenerative. Petty jealousies, rivalries, and private agendas soured the fullness of life, the Klingons had taught Koon, and it was a lesson he suspected shaped his selection for this job.

Koon was not so foolish as to fashion his crew on the model of Klingon society. Few humans had the stamina for the lifestyle. But Okuma's visit was the perfect example of how he put what he had learned into practice. Commander Okuma was overworked, overextended, and lonely. That she needed more in her life than she was willing to admit to Koon, was something he took for granted.

"Keep your personal lives off my time, Commander, and you have my blessing to proceed as you see fit," Captain Koon said sternly. Then he softened his voice and added, "Darin's a good man, Samantha, I can't think of a better match for you."

Okuma blushed a floured shade of red, and averted her eyes. "This seems like I'm asking my dad to go out on a date," she said shyly,

"I suppose you can look at it that way, but I don't," Koon said offhandedly. "From my point of view this conversation was inevitable."

Okuma was confused by the remark and her expression openly told him so.

"Sooner or later we're going to find a way to either keep us all forever young, which I don't favor, or replace the crew as we all begin to age past service years," Koon explained.

Okuma giggled, "I can't imagine what _Voyager _must be doing to address this problem."

Koon snorted, "You can't imagine, and I don't want to know."

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David Cabrillo stared at his data in dismay that night. The third planet was dry. After the ship had moved far enough along to see the planet, David had a clear view of the world backlit by the star. He barely registered the rest of the data. The two large moons, the perfect gravity, the nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere all paled in comparison to this gloomy detail. "No water, not a damned drop in the entire system," he said aloud

"We'll mange, David," a voice said behind him.

By now he recognized Kree's voice and looked forward to hearing it. But he wondered how she always managed to sneak up behind him without alerting him. He turned around and saw the little Andorian looking over his shoulder at the data that confirmed his worst fears. "I'm not sure what to do," he said. "We need water for almost every project on the list including keeping us alive."

"You're exaggerating," she said softly, "we'll manage."

"I wish I had your confidence," he said. "That planet should be uninhabitable by the formation models I have."

Kree cuffed his shoulder playfully. "You should know better than that," she scolded him, "there are examples I can show you that defy that assumption." She leaned forward and manipulated the controls on his display panel.

The planetarium was the most elaborate display in the whole ship. Large, precise, and with a huge library of imagery, the designers of _Pioneer_ had once argued to install the system in the bridge to facilitate better integration of the crew with their work stations, but the complexity of the idea made it far too elaborate to implement. The image shifted above their heads to display the pink sky of a hazy atmosphere. The ground below was parched and dusty, and a large lake of oily black water nestled in the hollow of a deep valley.

"Cardassia doesn't have detectable water either," Kree said.

"But they once did," he explained. "The water was wasted over centuries of misuse and boiled off the surface."

"What about Vulcan?" she asked.

"It's a very old world," he said, "but it formed with more than enough water. The local star is just boiling it off faster than they can replenish it."

"But you can't see it from this far out either," she pointed out.

"No but…" he floundered on the next part of his argument and slumped in his chair when he couldn't find the words.

"Maybe the water was there, but has been removed," she suggested.

"That would take a huge effort," David argued.

"So it took a huge effort," Kree said flippantly. "The planet could be habitable."

"I suppose," he allowed gloomily. "I just can't tell from here."

Kree assumed a strangely arrogant expression like a woman examining the fine appointments of a house. She tilted her head, and narrowed her eyes while her mouth became a thin slash across her face. To David she looked disappointed one moment and challenging the next. "At least you're honest, David," she said after a long pause. "It must hurt you to admit such things."

"I don't like to disappoint if that's what you mean," he said.

Kree's nostrils flared and her antennae dipped towards him. It was an odd sight to David and he felt a strange sensation of being weighed and measured somehow. After a long silence she said, "I believe you, David."

He didn't know why, but he felt suddenly embarrassed. Bashfully he turned away from her and brought up another display. Blue ocean crashed against high cliffs covered in sun-drenched moss and golden sand. Clear, blue sky opened up overhead casting Kree and himself in bright sunlight.

Kree blinked against the glare for a moment or two before asking, "What is this place?"

"It's the beach in Spain near my home," he said. "I wanted to show it to you."

"It's wonderful!" she sighed. After a moment's consideration she added, "This is what you hoped to find on Cove, isn't it?"

David nodded unhappily.

"I can't say I blame you," she said. "Show me your home."

The image moved over the cliffs to a low group of ornate buildings surrounded by an adobe wall. On the top of the largest building sat the unmistakable, if small, dome of an observatory.

Kree scoffed, "You really have had your head in the stars all your life, Cabrillo." She turned off the display. "Is there anything else you do?"

Embarrassed, David had to admit there wasn't.

Kree rolled her eyes and muttered to herself, "You sure know how to pick 'em, girl."

David thought this little comment would spell the end of her visits, but she continued.

"You were wondering why I came here earlier?" she asked.

David almost blurted he didn't care so long as she came back to talk with him from time to time.

Kree didn't let him speak. Instead she playfully ran her fingers through his hair. The sensation was a new one for David and the effect was blissfully crippling. He hadn't realized that such sensations existed in his body and he stared at her in amazement. "I know you can't resist me, David," she said in a husky voice. He wanted to agree with her, but she placed a finger to his lips and traced their outline with its tip. Shockwaves of pleasure blotted all thought from his mind. When she bent to kiss him, the last frustrations of the day, the last few weeks, and the past few years fell away as completely. Almost as completely as he fell for her.


	6. Scouts

_USS Damacletian _did almost nothing on a small scale. When she engaged her massive impulse drive, her wake had to be cleared for thousands of miles astern. When she dropped into warp, her subspace bubble was large enough to carry away nearby asteroids and up to three _Excelsior-_class ships for the ride. When she let loose her weapons, wide swaths of destruction were the rule. When she engaged or disengaged her cloaking device, the perspective of her backdrop changed dramatically. She had not been designed for subtlety which made the secretive nature of her crew and command structures all the more ironic. She was a Dreadnought, a super weapon, built for nothing less than the biggest of big wars, but currently she was being used as an espionage hub and she wasn't well suited for it. But her crew had little choice in the matter, and so she conformed to the wishes of her masters in her biggest of big ways.

Although not built specifically for speed, there was no question she had the power for it. Cruising along beyond the design limits of her two warp cores (one for the engines, one for the rest of the ship and saucer section,) she managed a respectable (almost suicidal) warp 9.99992 for three weeks until she arrived at the last known location of_ Pioneer._ Her arrival could hardly have been missed had an observer been nearby. Despite her powerful cloaking device, her subspace wake stirred up a rooster tail five times the size of _Pioneer's_ recent run. The slow fusion gasses played around the cloaking bubble and displayed its revolutionary elliptical footprint for all to see. The huge, oblong hole in the gasses resembled a perfectly smooth and lustrous ball of oil rolling along the blue surface of the Great Barrier. The ball simultaneously reflected the light of the Barrier and allowed the light of it pass through. The ball of oil tended to lack a continuous outline and seemed to fade in blotchy patches into nothingness. The eye of an observer would have struggled to focus on the huge object playing in the dust.

The inventors of the Starfleet cloaking technology based their first generation of their model on captured Romulan technology current in the 2320's. Over the next three updates, the device had evolved in almost every way but one: it still ran on an artificial singularity kept separate from the main power supply. The system could operate under conditions that would overload the output of the largest Starbase generators and was considered flawless even by defected Romulan engineers. So it was much to Captain Semmes annoyance that her cloaked ship was so brazenly exposed. A further examination of the data informed her that the singularity inside the device was drawing the dust from the Great Barrier up into the ship's path making the _Damacletian_'s impulse engines and main deflector struggle against this artificial tide of fusion dust. In disgust she ordered the cloak dropped and the sensor shrouds activated.

The massive Dreadnought seemed to glide out of the oily bubble instead of shimmer into existence. Her proud lines exposed to the scrutiny of the stars for the first time in six years, she eased into the light with a majestic flourish as the Great Barrier backlit her belly like blue-white stage lights. Sources from inside the Klingon Empire spoke of a cloaking device test bed that had been running for over eighty years straight, but these six years represented the longest any Federation ship had ever been continuously cloaked. That too annoyed Semmes because she knew the _USS Trajin, _having activated her cloak about a week after the _Damacletian, _would soon hold the record for marathon cloaking runs. Semmes could never hope to regain the title for at least a decade.

That's not to say dropping the cloak was not without its advantages. Sensor range was cut in half by the cloak, and the detail they gleaned was inhibited in direct proportion to the output of the device. With the cloak down, a thousand sensor stations were active for the first time in years, and the crew scrambled to make use of them. Semmes now had at her disposal a near godlike vision of the space around her for light years in every direction. She had no intention of squandering the opportunity.

"I want all science duty shifts at general quarters," Captain Semmes ordered.

King nodded, "Aye, sir. Should we include the tactical personnel as well?"

Semmes rolled her eyes impatiently. "Yeesss!" she hissed drawing out the word to imply that detail was childishly obvious.

King nodded again. A man had to grow a thick skin around Angela Semmes, and after seven years his was thick bordering on ironclad. "Aye, sir," he said again before he began calling up duty rosters and department heads. Within fifteen minutes the ship bustled with all the fury of a pitched battle. King thought the time a bit long and wanted to trim it a bit, but he didn't want to tell Semmes that yet. Better to wait and have drills organized while the ship was cloaked or the Captain was otherwise preoccupied.

"Report on the Hirogen net," Semmes ordered.

Lieutenant Tevel answered her in his flat, calm, voice, "The nodes in this area are active. The six we shut down are functioning again."

"Are we locked out of the system?" Semmes asked.

"No, sir," Tevel replied, "our access codes still work."

"Check to see if the shrouds are sufficient to hide us," Semmes ordered.

Tevel returned to his station and manipulated the nodes' sensor grid for a moment or two before announcing, "We are not detected."

"Good," Semmes purred. "Now try to find the threshold where we will be detected by the net, and be thorough about it. I want no surprises from these things." She turned to Lieutenant Green, and raised a questioning eyebrow, "Do you have anything of interest yet?"

Green was grateful he did. "Starfleet warp signature, badly garbled," he said. "I've confirmed an intercept coarse with navigation."

"Splendid!" Semmes said. "Commander Dar' Moth, engage intercept course on my mark."

Lieutenant Commander Dar' Moth tapped a few keys on his panel. When he was satisfied, the Cardassian informed Semmes he was ready.

"Tactical," Semmes barked cheerfully, "Intercept time to target."

Lieutenant Lien was hesitant to answer her. "I'm not sure, sir. The readings from the warp trail are too garbled to estimate an accurate target velocity."

Semmes' good mood evaporated. "Green, is that true?" she asked angrily.

Green shook his head, "We could know within two points of actual warp, but I'll agree with Tactical on this one, that's a wide margin of error."

"Then we must take steps to narrow that margin," Semmes snapped. "Launch a full spread of shrouded probes along _Pioneer's _trajectory."

Lien obeyed, and half a dozen Mark 147S probes raced out of the forward torpedo launchers. Like hunting dogs they traced the faint scent left behind _Pioneer_ then fanned out around the trail to get the clearest possible picture. Spacing themselves 2,000 kilometers apart, they shot data via coded lasers to each other for compilation and transmission back to the _Damacletian._

Semmes didn't order the ship to follow the probes yet. The probes were small, and their shrouds should be more effective against snooping eyes than the field around the dreadnought. No vessel this large could call itself invisible to the naked eye, but the Hirogen sensor net only activated sensor eyes if other network tripwires were crossed. She wanted to know what Tevel's evaluation of the sensitivity of the net was before she went charging after the probes.

While the cloaking device was a high power, full spectrum blind to sensors, shrouding technology concentrated on blunting long range sensors, active sensor sweeps, passive emissions, and non-optical detection. Every ship in the Federation fleet had a shroud including _Pioneer_. It didn't make the ship impossible to see, but it did make it hard to find without impairing the abilities of the vessel at all. Electronic Countermeasures were the next step in the shroud, but that was an active system that could be detected if not pinpointed. The shroud by comparison was a device to use when, metaphorically, the lights were already out, the enemy was asleep or not looking in a deliberate manner, or in a scouting capacity where the full arsenal of the _Damacletian's _sensors were needed. The shroud aboard _Damacletian_ was top-shelf and state-of-the-art. Under normal cruising conditions, it could obscure their warp trail, but it could do nothing but fan out and disperse their impulse wake and warp signature.

"How badly is _Pioneer_ damaged?" she asked.

"I have a department working on that right now," King replied, "a full report should be forthcoming within the hour. Estimates indicate port nacelle damage and warp core breaching. No estimates available on impulse drive yet."

Semmes splayed her perfect, white, practically new teeth in the smile of a Cheshire cat. Her eyes glittered with satisfaction bordering on sexual climax. "Peyter limped away from the encounter here," she purred, "That will make tracking him easier for the Hirogen." She rubbed her hands lightly against each other with long sensual glides along her palms with her fingertips. It was an unconscious gesture, but her crew was familiar with it. Rumor had it she could achieve climax in this manner, and there were solid reports she was studded with gooseflesh whenever she began the gesture beneath her uniform. "Mr. Green, what is the status of the Puppeteer project?"

Green smiled, "Ready for its first test, Captain."

"Wonderful," Semmes said. "I'll compile a treatment for a test by the end of the day. Have the project heads meet me in my ready room in two hours." She turned to Tevel, "Mr. Tevel, can we proceed through the net in this mode?"

Tevel was adamant in his response, "Not without sufficient data from tactical. We may be able to fool the net, but a Hirogen ship is another matter."

Semmes wasn't deterred from her good mood. "Mr. Lien, do you have positions and telemetry data of all the Hirogen ships in this sector?"

"Forwarding that data to Mr. Tevel now, sir," Lien replied.

Tevel studied the data for a moment then nodded approvingly. "Space secure for shroud running," he announced.

"Engage intercept course, Mr. Dar' Moth. Mr. Genghis perform a system wide diagnostic on the cloaking device and perform any maintenance it should require." The _Damacletian _heaved its massive bulk away from the Great Barrier and pointed her prow towards the dust cloud Koon's people had dubbed "no man's land." An instant later her mighty warp drive, so large it required three nacelles just to displace the energy, flashed to life and threw the ship into subspace. Behind her, another rooster tail flattened and distorted the surface of the Great Barrier like a foot slapping down on fine dust.

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Far off in the distant cloud of No-Man's-Land, a Hirogen network node was looking at the Great Barrier. It was an old node and had floated serenely at this point in space for 30,000 years. It was manufactured and placed there during the expansion of the Hirogen Empire and had blithely ignored (and been ignored by) history ever since. Its design was so solid, so rugged, and so well thought out it still had a few millennia ahead of its useful life, but in its entire long, lonely sojourn here, it had never seen a thing of interest to its makers. Not to say that was uncommon for a node. The vastness of space changes at a pace so slow and incremental, the theologically minded observer could be justified in thinking the Almighty afraid of the time He set in motion, and these nodes could provide masses of data to argue the point. In hindsight the effort to build, place, and even ignore these nodes would seem a massive waste of time and energy since they provided nothing in exchange for much.

…Until now. Looking down on the surface of the Great Barrier, the node finally saw something. Something _big_. While it had missed the antics of _Pioneer_ by a narrow margin, _Damacletian_ was an order of magnitude harder to miss. Still, what the node saw wasn't the outline of a Federation Dreadnought. It saw something far more useful. When the _Damacletian _raced away from the Great Barrier, the node saw the footprint of a massive ship and the energies it commanded outlined against the backdrop of the blue-white surface of slow fusion gases.

Looking up a subroutine in its software, the node reviewed the transmission procedure for the first time of its long life and transmitted it to the rest of the network. The information was ominous though the node didn't have the processing power to realize it. In blunt terms: the disturbance in the dust told the Hirogen a predator was on the loose. A _big_ predator with the size and energy to justify a huge appetite.

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Koon began slowing the ship days before they arrived at the Cove system. This was good for a number of reasons, but the first two on the list were the easiest to understand. First: the warp core would last longer and run further before it had to be shut down. Gordon had been telling Koon for a week to slow the ship down before a catastrophic and unpredictable failure occurred, but the Captain wanted as much distance between the hunters and themselves as he could before he risked even a moment's hesitation. Second: Koon wanted the system scouted out in considerable detail before _Pioneer_ arrived. Launching shuttles at warp was a tricky process at any time, but _Pioneer_ had the added complexity of having shuttles only capable of warp 4. Koon had managed to keep the ship at warp 8 since their initial dash from the Great Barrier, so dropping off the shuttles to scout out the system made little sense if they arrived a week or two after the ship did.

Much to Gordon's relief, Captain Koon gradually brought the ship all the way down to warp 1 before he ordered the shuttles launched. He kept four of his surviving twenty-three shuttles aboard _Pioneer _in the event that he somehow needed them, and sent Okuma out with the rest. The shuttle mission served a dual purpose. The first was to scout the system out for a possible obit to rebuild the ship in. But the next one reflected a more pressing concern in Koon's eyes. He was desperately short of pilots and navigators after his time near the Core, and he needed all he could train in short order. Fortunately the trip to Cove wasn't terribly complicated once the shuttles were launched. With some serious transporter time and some fancy footwork, Lieutenant Forte managed to launch all the shuttles, and turn them over to the trainee crews in under an hour before transporting over to Okuma's shuttle leading the pack to the distant star.

Each crew consisted of a pair of prospective pilots/navigators since Okuma insisted on everyone involved with the training get as thorough an education as possible on the subject. Koon and Gordon took over the training and handling aboard _Pioneer _herself while the gaggle of shuttles roamed ahead of the ship.

Commander Okuma was in charge of the flight schedule, and she had gone so far as to check with Koon before she deliberately put Forte in her personal shuttle. She managed to stay professional and cool while they had _Pioneer_ in sight, but as the larger ship fell behind them, she began to feel nervous. Travel time to Cove would be a week at warp 4, and during that time she would have Forte all to herself. It took every speck of resolve she had in her to keep herself from blurting out her feelings for the younger man once the shuttle dashed ahead of the ship.

For his part, Forte kept a close eye on the other shuttles. "The _Pike's Cutoff _is lagging behind," he grumbled. "That Cabrillo kid better get a clue before I let him loose at Cove."

Struggling to order her thoughts, Okuma had to agree with Forte. "I thought Kree could manage the ship."

Forte nodded and tapped the display to emphasize his point. "She can. That's why I'm griping about Cabrillo. She wouldn't let that shuttle go so far astray if she were at the controls."

The primary job of any First Officer is looking after the people under them, and Samantha took this job very seriously. She was not a gossip before she had accepted Koon's offer for the position, but the job had turned her into one. Often as not she spent hours chasing down rumors and hearsay just to keep appraised of the mood of the crew. One such rumor that had led to some serious trouble in the past involved one of the scientists brewing hallucinogenic drugs in his lab for his own use. That had been an ugly episode, but some good things came from it. The addicted scientist was now undergoing treatment, and was doing some useful work with Dr. Totem. Stuff of this nature left a bad taste in Sam's mouth when she pried into folks lives, but there was no helping it. Gossip was one of the tools she had, and she had little choice but to use it. If that meant she had to nosey from time-to-time, then she could console herself with the knowledge that she wouldn't go blabbing about the ship if the information didn't affect the majority of the crew. But on the side she cropped up all sorts of sordid stories she wished she could forget. One such story in the last week implied Cabrillo and Kree were lovers. The third watch officer had reported complaints regarding the Planetarium three days ago. Apparently someone was locking the door and creating all kinds of racket between the second and first duty watch down there. The obvious culprit would be Cabrillo since he spent almost every waking moment in the room, but the addition of Kree to the rumor beggared Sam's credulity. The thought of the short, austere Andorian and the tall, lanky, and painfully shy Spaniard together struck her as nothing short of impossible. For one: Andorians didn't prefer humans as companions for some reason they couldn't describe…

…Much like she couldn't describe why she found Forte so attractive. To be sure Darin was a hansom man by any measure, but that wasn't what kept her attention coming back to him. The fact of the matter was she found a new reason to dwell on him every day. The things he did and said and the manner in which he composed himself added up to a muse she found both inviting and engaging….

_Dammit!_ She raged to herself. _Get your mind off of him for two minutes, girl! Get a grip! This trip isn't for playtime. There's work to be done._

The trouble was that was patently false. Aside from a few minor adjustments to the shuttle's systems, Samantha and Darin had quite literally nothing to do for the next week. Thinking about all she wanted to say to the man only made the time ahead more tedious a prospect. _So what do I do now?_ She asked herself, _grab him by the shoulders and smother him in kisses until he relents?_ The idea was not without its charms, but she dismissed it with a miserable humph.

"Something on your mind, Commander?" Forte asked without looking up from his work. When she didn't answer for a long time he turned to face her. His expression was one of personal concern for her. "Commander?" he asked again.

She gave up. There was no way she could think of to phrase it without sounding… well… like a love struck teenager. With a dramatic sigh she began, "I have a problem, Lieutenant."

Forte nodded. His eyes shifted up to hers and stared at her innocently. "What would that be? I trust I'm not boring you already on this trip." He assumed an exaggerated mode of speech and his eyes went wide with mock horror, "I've doomed the mission to failure by not properly entertaining my superior officer! Regulation 88-dash-66-dash-110A clearly states: 'ALL HELSMEN MUST AMUSE THE FIRST OFFICER FOR THE DURATION OF AWAY MISSIONS.'" He threw up his hands in an appeal to a higher power for justice.

"Darin," Sam chided him quietly.

"YEARS OF TRAINING WASTED!" Darin bawled as if he hadn't heard her. "THE SHAME OF THIS STAIN ON THE FAMILY HONOR WILL NEVER BE ERASED!"

"Darin!" Sam repeated a bit louder.

Forte fell out of his chair with a heavy thud to the deck and kneeled in front of her, "I'M RUINED!" he moaned, "ALL HISTORY WILL BLACKEN MY NAME FOR FAILING SAMANTHA OKUMA!"

Sam began to giggle. Despite her best efforts she couldn't keep her voice even. "This isn't behavior becoming an officer, Darin Forte."

"NOW I'VE MADE AN ASS OF MYSELF! Wait… you've already seen my ass." His voice turned quiet and crafty. His eyes darted from side to side as if he were looking for eavesdroppers. "How do I make my superior officer forget I paraded my bum before her discriminating eye? The instructors at the Academy were rather lax on the subject of how to make amends for mooning Commanders. Ensigns, Lieutenants, and enlisted NCO's were covered but not Commanders. How foolish of me to cut class they day they covered it!"

Samantha laughed. It took a moment to realize how long it had been since she had laughed. She'd been so wrapped up in the crisis back on _Pioneer_ she'd lost all patience with jokes recently. Now as the spasms racked her lungs and split her face into a careless grin, a vast relief wash over her like a warm shower.

Forte smiled at her and returned to his seat. He made a glance at the monitor as her laughter subsided to giggles again then returned his attention to Sam. In a confiding voice he asked, "So what's the problem, Commander?"

"Ugh!" she groaned. When he called her "Commander" all the tension came back to her as responsibilities came crashing down with it. "Let's dispense with rank for now, Darin, alright? I need a break from being the First Officer."

Forte smiled, "Sounds good. In fact would the Great and Terrible 'Dragon Sam' care for some breakfast? I missed out on mine this morning."

"Do they really call me that?" Okuma asked.

Forte shrugged, "Only means you're tough," he said then added, "but still loved."

Sam slumped in her seat. "I certainly don't feel loved anymore," she admitted miserably.

Forte waved a dismissive hand, "A short break will change your outlook. To tell you the truth, I'm glad to be here with you."

Sam felt a nervous flutter of hope. "Why?"

Forte assumed a knowing smile and told her in a voice dripping with sarcasm, "It's a special bond a man shares with a fellow officer he's mooned. I have it on good authority it's an uncommon rare occurrence in the Fleet."

"You're right," Sam agreed wryly.

"I should have run away from you the instant you saw my butt," he added.

"I would have stood in line for the sight," Sam admitted.

Darin laughed this time then made his way back to the replicator. Privately Sam thought this was going better than it had any right to be. She had the long standing habit of keeping her guard firmly in place while Darin had a knack for getting her to drop it. If things continued in this vein without progressing to the degree of intimacy she desired, this would be a refreshing trip for her just the same.

Darin ordered a plate of eggs and rice with a glass of juice to wash it down. Sam knew he was either oblivious to her feelings or hiding his response with remarkable finesse. "What do you want…Samantha?" he asked a bit nervously. Addressing her by her first name was new in his mouth and mind, and it was clear it didn't quite fit right. Still Sam thought the sound of her name had a wonderful ring to it when spoken in his clear, tenor voice. "It's been so long since anyone has said my name to me," she said.

"I thought the Captain did it all the time," Darin said.

Sam shook her head, "Nah, when we're alone it comes down to 'Pete' and 'Sam.' I don't think I've heard 'Samantha' in years."

A shadow crossed Forte's face for a moment. "Are you two...?" he began to ask but trailed off as he thought better of it.

Sam grinned at him. "Intimate?" she challenged.

Darin shrugged nervously. "It's none of my business, but the rumor is that you two…" he trailed off unable to muster the nerve to say his thoughts aloud.

Sam didn't want him to suffer for his interest, but he looked so adorable with that uncomfortable expression on his handsome face. After a short pause she told him, "No, Darin, Peyter and I are good friends, but he's devoted to his wife back home."

The shadow on Darin's face appeared again. "What about you?" he asked.

"I'm interested in someone, but of course everyone on the ship is one of my subordinates so I'm at a loss how to begin things," she told him truthfully enough.

To her surprise Darin dropped the glass of juice in his hand. A blank look of shock crossed his face and his mouth opened and closed a number of times. A bit belatedly he shifted his attention to the spill on the floor then back to her, then back to the spill again. He stooped to pick it up and put the plate in his other hand down. She could see his hands trembling slightly.

Sam had to stare at the man. Ordinarily Darin's nerves were solid ice. To see him this badly rattled struck her as downright alarming. "Did I say something wrong?" she asked.

For a long minute Darin said nothing. Looking at the floor he finally admitted, "I don't know how to begin things either." He looked up with hopeful blue eyes and added, "But I want things to begin with you."

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Far behind them the _Pike's Cutoff_ was acting out something very similar to the events with Okuma and Forte. The chief difference was there was no pretense or hesitation on Kree or Cabrillo's part. The blessed privacy of the shuttle allowed them a marvelous opportunity to enjoy each other in ways they had to restrain aboard _Pioneer_. Forte had been right about Cabrillo piloting the shuttle, but he'd missed the reason why the astronomer couldn't get the _Pike's Cutoff_ running with the rest of the shuttles. The trouble was with Kree whispering the instructions in his ear between nips and kisses while he struggled to concentrate. She almost didn't allow him to drop into warp when she did something to his neck that sent a violent chill down his spine.

"I adore the way you respond to me," Kree whispered in his ear once he engaged the warp drive. "It makes me feel so wanted."

"Have no fear on that score," David said. "I can't get enough of you."

She kissed him tenderly on the lips and sat down in his lap. She stared levelly into his eyes for a moment. David had the chance to marvel at how very blue her eyes were. Truly no human eyes could ever hope to be so icy, almost radiant, China blue. Not surprising since every bit of her was blue, but they were quite striking nonetheless.

"I adore you, David," she said quietly. Her voice gained a strong undertone that told him to trust this statement wholly and without question. He might have replied to her, but she was good at taking his breath away with the smallest gestures.

Several hours later David untangled himself from her sleeping body and sat down at the science station. The news from Cove was getting worse. No water. NONE. Cabrillo couldn't understand it. Stars pushed the chemical makeup of their planets out with their light, and Cove had not even hinted at this little bugbear when he had surveyed it originally. Furthermore the data from the planets themselves didn't mesh with the models in his database. The models told him the second, third, and fourth planets should all have a near M-class environment; something no one in the history of planetary astronomy had ever dreamed possible. The second planet was small and buffeted by the solar wind so badly, that much of its atmosphere had blown away leaving a thin, warm layer of gases above a baked surface. The third planet mirrored the conditions Earth enjoyed in a cosmic sense being almost an identical mass and distance from Cove. The fourth planet was an interesting case in and of itself even without water. For starters, it was almost exactly one and a half times the size of Earth. That meant that gravity became a stronger mechanism in the atmosphere than Cove's radiance at that distance. Scientists had searched for years for just such a planet to discover how the weather of such a world differed from the ones driven by sunlight. The biology of such a place was a close second in the list of unknowns, but without water such life had to be silicone based and all too familiar for all concerned scientists.

Fascinating as all the speculation was about the prospects for these worlds had there been water present; Dr. Spaulding and Dr. Totem were growing more concerned with the solar wind of the system. Part of the reason David had miscalculated on the presence of water in the system was that there was abundant hydrogen and oxygen being blown off Cove's corona. Spaulding had measured the densities of these elements in the solar wind, and Totem had calculated some fairly alarming predictions. According to Totem, the density of the oxygen and hydrogen in the Cove system was dangerously close to a flash point. He predicted massive static energies unlike any ever seen building up between the surface of Cove and the first of the ice giants. The gist of his concern was almost laughable. In lay terms: the empty space between Cove and the ice giants was filled with combustible hydrogen and oxygen at densities that could see a chain reaction and blow the Cove system apart, right to the outer belts. No one had ever heard of such a thing, but Totem was never wrong when his figures were tallied. Faced with the prospect of flying blindly into a powder keg, Koon had sent the shuttles ahead to study (and preferably dismiss) this notion. The thinking was that the shuttles could approach Cove from a safe distance and maneuver out of the way. _Pioneer _was so badly mauled that once she dropped out of warp, Chief Gordon promised no power under creation would start the warp core again without a total rebuild. With the impulse engines still out of commission, the chances of them escaping Cove's gravity once they arrived was just about nil in the event of an emergency.

A sleepy voice interrupted his thoughts. "David?" Kree yawned from the pile of clothes, pillows, and sheets they had made on the floor.

"Just checking on Cove," he replied not looking around.

Kree didn't stir for so long he thought she had gone back to sleep. At last she asked, "Anything new?"

Cabrillo made a discouraged grunt and scowled at the data.

"I'll take that as no," Kree said sounding more awake than before.

"I might be missing something," Cabrillo allowed.

Much to his surprise the cabin lights flashed to full intensity making him blink back the afterimage of blobby colors and totally obscuring the data beneath them. He turned around and saw Kree standing stark naked on the other side of the cabin with her hands on her hips. As familiar as he had become with her body, they had always needed to turn the lights down in order to maintain privacy before. He'd never seen her body before. In a scolding voice she said, "I agree, Lieutenant Cabrillo, you are shamelessly missing something." She spread her arms wide and twirled slowly around on her toes so he could see every bit of her. Damn, but she could take his breath away!

"D-dazzling," he managed to stammer out of a mouth gone suddenly dry.

Kree walked over to him and made him stand before her. She spun him about and drank in the fresh sight of him. Her antennae seemed to pulse and twitch as her eyes hungrily roamed over him. "I have to say the same for you," she said. She was a head and a half shorter than he, and when she drew him close again, her head lay against his chest and her antennae seemed to sniff about his throat. After a long pause she said, "We have a problem."

"What's that?" he asked.

"I don't think we can hide this once we get back to the ship."

Cabrillo had to agree with her. After a long minute holding her he said, "I can be happy with that, love."

That started things all over again and this time she wore him down to sleep.

Over the next few days they did little else but enjoy each other. Neither found an excuse to get dressed during all that time. They talked, loved, and worried about the future. What they discovered at Cove kept coming up as the make-or-break linchpin to their plans. If _Pioneer_ couldn't find a safe orbit to allow her crew to repair her, the crew might have to take the shuttles to all the nearby stars and try to find help. The next step would be to tow _Pioneer_ to a more suitable spot. Some, if not most, of the crew would be sent home to ease the strain on supplies if things came to that.

As ardent as Kree was to stay near Cabrillo no matter what the consequences to her career, she had little faith in her ability to keep him at her side if the crew scattered. She was the most senior navigator in the crew, and no doubt Koon would want her available for his mission to _Voyager_. By comparison, David's fate almost certainly would be among the homebound.

Added to that was the threat of the Hirogen. Lieutenant M'Rath had managed to wheedle some useful tidbits out of the captive Heartstock and what he learned wasn't encouraging. To be blunt, it was amazing they were all alive. Heartstock told M'Rath _Pioneer_ not only entered Hirogen space, but had been in Hirogen space for the better part of two years. The reason why there was a huge no-man's-land in the 3KPC arm between the Great Barrier and the outer Core dust cloud was because the Hirogen had hunted the area out over a thousand years ago.

Rumor had it that Dr. Totem flew into a rage upon hearing this news. Few would blame him. Of all the people on the ship, Totem had the highest hopes and the most at stake when First Contact missions were involved. Half of his department had languished in idle speculation and private research since their last First Contact two years ago. Now the reptilian scientist knew there would be no First Contact missions for the better part of five more years before they flew out of this barren stretch.

To Kree and David this meant that the crew being sent home had over six years at warp 4 to reach the limits of Hirogen hunting grounds and presumed safety. Neither one of them thought shuttles stood a chance against the hunting ships, and there was no telling what Koon would have to endure to reach a rendezvous with Janeway in the Delta Quadrant.

With the zeal peculiar to new lovers, Kree and Cabrillo devised a plan to make David indispensable to Koon. If _Pioneer _couldn't be salvaged, perhaps David could act as a scout for Koon's _Voyager _attempt. There was much merit in this line of thinking. First and foremost, Cabrillo was an astronomer and knew more about stars in a single glance than most would ever know. Such a man on point patrol could help the larger body of Koon's crew to navigate through the great unknown they were surrounded by. With Kree being fed information David sent back to her, the possibility of trimming years off the trip was very high they imagined. If that meant they had to spend weeks and months apart while David scouted ahead, it was far better than the decades they would have to endure for a reunion in the Alfa Quadrant. With their bodies thrumming with new passion, any span of time apart seemed an impossible feat of endurance.

So they schemed, worried, and on occasion argued, but for the most part they basked in the love between them. They were well aware this could be all too fleeting.

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The flight of shuttles arrived at Cove's heliopause six days after leaving _Pioneer_. Once there, they fanned out and made a careful study of the hydrogen/oxygen concentration inside that boundary. What they found was both encouraging and puzzling. Totem's calculations had been right after all. Massive static charges arched across the system in fits and starts making the outer asteroid belt strobe like moonlight on ocean waves. The static only got worse as things got closer to the star. The inner asteroid belt was so bad it looked like a roiling hoop of light around the star.

"I can't believe I missed that," Cabrillo said over the con. "It must have been lost in the glare of the star."

"Or your search for all that water, Lieutenant," Okuma said with uncharacteristic cheer. Forte had been right after all. A little break from being in charge had changed her outlook remarkably. Had the astronomer delivered the bad news during the first meeting in Koon's ready room, she might have dressed him down to Ensign for a mistake of this magnitude, but after her time alone with Darin she was willing to let this go. "I think it's safe to say we've never seen anything like it before, so why should you have been looking for it?"

Forte eyed the spectacle with nothing short of awe. "Amazing!" he declared. He keyed the com and said, "Cabrillo, let me take this opportunity to thank you for the rare privilege to see this. This is…" he searched for the proper words, "…astonishing! If this is the sort of thing your mistakes produce, I'm inclined to have you screw up more often."

Sam laughed. Since the com was on audio only, she muted the mic, and kissed Darin on the cheek. He returned the favor with one on the lips before returning his attention to the readings.

One of the unfortunate shortages Okuma had in her shuttles was a complete absence of engineers. Gordon had argued he needed them to keep _Pioneer_ running and to keep the refit plans moving along. Sam had agreed with him the ship was in terrible shape, but the lack even a solitary engineer among her team presented its shortcomings now. Totem's calculations were correct, and now they had to figure out how to move about the Cove system without detonating the hydrogen/oxygen mix with their impulse drives. Also the cumulative friction between the shuttles' hulls and these gasses would be way off the scale of ordinary radiation friction. Forte and Kree felt that beefing up the deflector power in order to keep the ionized wind from arching and providing a catalyst for the chain reaction would be impossible, and a few of the scientists she had brought along worked out the tedious quantum physics and agreed after two hours of furious argument. Negatively ionizing the hulls came to mind next, but that was dismissed as far too risky. Shield modulation, impulse mixtures, and going back to the ship to retrieve Gordon so that he could solve the problem were all suggested and dismissed out of hand. Finally Lieutenant Shin had an idea Okuma liked.

"I can warp directly into orbit around Cove-3. Subspace doesn't have ionized particles, so we can travel freely about the system that way," Sophia pointed out.

"But you'll be positively charged once you drop back into real space," Forte pointed out.

"That won't matter if I drop into the atmosphere and gain a negative charge from the friction," Shin reasoned.

Forte turned to Okuma and eyed her skeptically. "Risky," he declared.

Sam considered this carefully. "That short of a precision jump is possible isn't it?" she asked Forte.

Darin looked unhappy, but nodded. "I'd prefer to do it myself in case something went wrong, and I'll insist Kree calculate the jump."

Shin was irate, "I can calculate a jump this short, Darin!" she barked.

Forte was remarkably calm. In a soothing tone he pointed out, "But you'll be emerging less than a hundred kilometers away from a hard body. You can't tell me that isn't dangerous."

"We used to do this back at the Academy all the time in simulations," Shin protested.

Sitting back and listening to even a brief moment of bickering, Okuma understood Koon's admonition to her two weeks ago when she and Gordon had started arguing. What had he said? "I'll tolerate disagreements, but mindless bickering I'll not stand for," or something like that. From her point of view she liked to hear her people tinkering with the idea from all angles, but she had to admit getting all hot and bothered only wasted time. Leadership was a bitch, but it was a set of dilemmas she had trained for. Trouble was the problem seemed to be an engineering problem rather than a command problem. A leader made decisions and acted on them, an engineer acted primarily as a technical problem solver, and a scientist gathered data to draw conclusions. Sam had two of the three classes of specialists with her, but what she needed was a problem solver not decision makers or scientists.

Samantha Okuma had joined Starfleet at the tender age of sixteen for one reason alone: Command. She longed to be in charge, but she was strangely content to play second fiddle to Captain Koon. The explanation for this was hard for her to describe. Certainly she was a very young and ambitious officer, but she valued Peyter's trust over her desire for her own ship. He had a way of turning her efforts into positive action she found energizing and inspiring. In many ways he represented a paternal figure in her life. At the root of his appeal was what he offered her from the start: the chance for exploration. Okuma's idols were from history. Namely: the great explorers from Columbus, Cook, and Perry, to Archer, Pike, and Kirk. Koon offered her a chance to place herself among the pantheon of these great names and a crack at wonders they barely dreamed of. So far that promise had been of the most prosaic quality only.

…That is until now. Cove was a gold mine of wonders dazzling to behold and fascinating to consider. Okuma considered her options and noted all of them were efforts to reach the inner planets on a conventional approach from this side of the system. Maybe exploring the system from the outside inward would prove more constructive than sitting around arguing about how to take the direct rout. After all she had all these shuttles, why not have them spread out and look around? "I think we'll rule out the direct path to Cove-3 for now people. Split up into pairs and work around the outer belts. We have a week to figure this out; we might as well survey the site before we start experimenting with ways to penetrate the system."

There were grumbles from Shin and a young doctor named Turner who was with her in her shuttle, but the rest of the flight saw the sense of this and started spreading out and scanning away. There were a lot of ambitious, young Lieutenants scattered about the crews (Koon had promoted the last Ensign aboard the ship to a junior Lieutenant a year ago) and they were eager to do something now that they were here.

That left Okuma and Darin with nothing more to do than watch the pairs of shuttles fly off in nine different directions skirting Cove's limit of influence. For the better part of the day Sam was kept busy compiling data and forwarding it to the even dozen scientists she'd brought along.

Forte resolved to get some sleep and take over the job when Sam had to nod off later on. Much to the amusement and annoyance of everyone trying to talk to Okuma, Forte began snoring so loud he could be heard over the com traffic. She had to resort to a trick she'd learned during the past week to silence him, but she held off as long as she could out of embarrassment. When she could stand it no longer, she shut off the com gear, walked back to the cot Darin and she had shared all week, and nibbled his ear until he rolled over on his other side. The snores stopped at once, and Sam felt a pang of amusement she knew this much about the man. When she came back to the com gear it was to the tune of snide, knowing snickers and giggles.

She managed to get things moving along again, but she guessed the secret about Darin and her was out. It would have been nice to have a bit longer alone with him without the threat of judgment from others, but there was no real harm done. She noted everyone seemed friendlier than before. While Starfleet formalities were observed all day, the tone everyone used with her was far more relaxed and more conversational than before. She discovered she liked things this way. In the past she had to pry information out of people with a series of directed questions, now everybody volunteered information freely. By the time Darin awoke the com channel sounded like a round-table discussion about Cove, _Pioneer,_ approach vectors, ionization, and how much time they had to scour the system.

"You've been busy," Forte said as he plopped down in the seat next to hers. "Anything I should know about?"

"We can move to just inside the orbit of the second gas giant so long as we give that planet a wide berth," Sam explained. "The ionization drops off a great deal past that."

"Is it uniform?" Forte asked. Solar systems tended to scatter their material in elliptical hoops around the star. This meant that the orbits of planets were littered with detritus that had settled into line with the planet's path around the star. Consequently all the laws of physics dependant upon matter to operate, such as ionization and static discharges, were localized into bands around the star not unlike a cross section of an onion. The Sol system was a fairly mature one and much of the distinction between the orbits had been broken down to a few stray asteroids and dust clouds. In less settled systems the various orbits around the star could be so choked with debris as to make practical navigation impossible without a circuitous, tortured rout through a minefield of rocks, dust and explosive gasses.

"It seems so. Cabrillo is rhapsodizing about the 'dispersion curve' or something like that, so don't broach the subject with him unless you want an earful," Sam warned. The astronomer had been fairly animated for the majority of the day. The more he saw of Cove the more he wanted to see, and he was burning up the short-range frequencies between the shuttles trying to observe as much as he could. The one time Sam had casually asked a question about Cove-6, the boy had babbled on for ninety minutes before Kree managed to shut him up with a brisk slap to the back of his head.

"Nice to see the kid in his element," Forte yawned.

Sam gave him a sidelong glance. "You don't know the half of it."

Darin shook off the lingering sleep in his eyes and focused on the controls. He tapped a few keys, studied the data presented for a minute or two, then seemed to freeze as his professional eye spotted something in the data. "Who's on the polar approaches?" he asked.

"Shin and Taylor on the south magnetic pole of the star and Greer and T'Alio on the northern approach," Sam replied after a moment's consideration. "Why?"

Darin didn't answer right away. Instead he ran a series of test approaches through the navigation computer. After a long pause he asked, "Is Kree awake?"

"She nodded off about two hours ago," Sam answered. "Did you see something out there?"

"Maybe," Forte said slowly as if the idea in his head might get out of his skull if he pounced on it too quickly, "I guess it's time for Sophie to test her mettle." He keyed the com channel and told Sophia some fairly specific vectors to fly in towards the star.

"May I ask what all that was about?" Sam asked him.

"We'll know in a few hours, Commander," Forte replied reverting to his role as a helmsman as he applied his mind to the problem.

Sam almost flinched at being called "Commander" again, but she was too tired to care much by now. Wearily she stood from her seat and stretched her cramped limbs. She was so preoccupied with getting back to the cot and collapsing; she bent down and kissed Darin without thinking while the com was on before shuffling back to the cot. In a few minutes she was snoring quietly leaving Darin to explain to he fellow officers what had just happened.

Shin was the first to comment on the display. "Making points with the boss, Forte?" she asked in a playful challenge.

"I think he already scored his points, Sophie," Lieutenant Howard Greer chuckled from his shuttle on the other side of the system.

"Scandalous!" Shin giggled. "Old Dragon Sam has a thing for our dashing, young helmsmen."

"Cut it out, Sophie," Forte chided gently, "Samantha and I…"

"So it's 'Samantha' now!" Shin giggled triumphantly. "My, my but you've been a naughty boy!"

Forte sighed. The secret was out. He'd been able to keep it for only a week much to his disgust, but it appeared the feeling around the crew was one of amusement. Hardly a demoralizing affect. Sam had been worried the others would see their relationship in terms of the favoritism it could generate, but that appeared not to be the case.

That suited Darin Forte just fine because he was not about to stop his relationship with Samantha. If she had cared to ask, he'd had his eye on her for years. He'd noticed the lovely woman the day he had come aboard, but compared to what came later that first meeting was very dim and diffuse. He'd managed to dismiss her from his mind with the ease any young man can substitute one pretty face for another. However, the more he found out about Okuma, the more she appealed to him. He liked getting her to drop her guard because every part of the process was alluring. Her guard tantalized him with what it held beneath the veneer of self-control and self-denial. The actual dropping of her guard revealed her bawdy sense of humor. And the unguarded version of Samantha Okuma was a kind, loving, achingly tender woman any man would cherish like cool water in a dry and dusty land. He gradually developed a desire to enfold her in his arms and bury his face in her straight, black hair, and he'd indulged this impulse for the better part of the last week.

That aside, Forte was the senior Lieutenant on the scene and being called a "naughty boy" undermined his authority. Not that he was thin-skinned, Darin could take a jibe gracefully, but there was work to be done. "Sophia, what did you find out your way?"

"Trying to derail the painful stabs, Darin?" Shin asked.

"Just trying to get things done, Lieutenant," he temporized. "I've got a new heading for you if you're ready."

That got her moving. Shin occasionally made a passing comment about Okuma, but Forte kept her busy for the next two hours weaving around particles densities towards the solar South Pole. An identical survey was conducted by Greer at the North Pole and Darin's input kept all the other shuttles busy with their flying for hours until he was satisfied he had something.

"Sophia, start in towards the third planet between the density bands. Try to find a gap in the solar wind and ride it to the Van Allen belts. Curtis, you do the same from the North Pole, only I want you to head towards the second planet." _Time to start scouting the dangerous territory_, Forte thought. He glanced back at Samantha. She had told him about her admiration for the great explorers during their time alone. It seemed a shame she wasn't giving the orders to penetrate the system, but the data in front of him supported the timing. Also the possibility to explore the system from the perspective the planets surveyed was a temptation not to be denied. They needed to find a safe orbit for the ship when it arrived, and he was willing to cut any corner within reason to find it. The clock was ticking. When Koon arrived, Gordon had assured everyone the warp core would be completely spent. Darin judged that Cove had to offer a safe place to repair _Pioneer_ or they would all die; consequently that place had to be found.

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"Who are you?" the Hirogen chieftain growled at the image.

Standing inside an action-capture chamber Captain Semmes couldn't suppress a smile. "I am aboard _Pioneer_. You don't need to know more than that," she said.

The Hirogen man glared back at her. "Your manners need immediate improvement, blood-sack," he snarled.

"Your gratitude needs an overhaul!" Semmes countered sharply.

"Tapping into our net is a violation of our privacy, blood-sack, don't expect me to thank you for the intrusion into my sacred institutions," the Chieftain said.

Semmes managed not to giggle. Baiting these so-called "master hunters" was childsplay. Their pride was so fragile. The Chieftain was in over his head already, and Semmes had barely introduced herself. "You're asking the wrong questions, my friend," Semmes said coolly.

"Who you are and what you want are basic courtesies in my culture, blood-sack," the Chieftain snapped. "This intrusion into my communication net is unforgivable I might add."

"What I want should be obvious, Chieftain Gnan," Semmes purred, "I want to live."

Gnan started as if stung when she mentioned his name. Even through his alien features, the question was clear on his face. _How does this stranger know who I am?_ He recovered quickly but his manner shifted from offended to suspicious. "You have a strange way of looking out for your life," he said. "Just by intruding into our net, you have lessened the days you will run from us."

"On the contrary, I offer something you would cherish, Gnan. Hirogen are not opposed to an exchange are they?" Semmes asked.

Gnan was fully put off his guard by this turn of the conversation. While he was accustomed to prey trying to bargain for their lives, they had never sought out Hirogen ships to address their pleas. The Hirogen net was too adept at triangulating signals to make this kind of ploy any more than suicidal and everyone the Hirogen was familiar with understood that. "An exchange?"

"I offer you the hunt of your life," Semmes announced. "I'll even offer the perfect bait."

"Bait is for the unimaginative!" Gnan scoffed. It was a long standing tradition in Hirogen lore that bait was tool of second-rate or desperate hunters. A true Hirogen stalked and tracked his prey with a plethora of skills learned over a lifetime. The art, and worth, of a hunt came by beating the prey at their own game. Luring prey was the realm of Trappers and unbecoming of a Hunter to indulge in. Hunter's stalked, tracked, and struck at prey, and any comparison to a Trapper was stab at Hirogen ego. Gnan surveyed the faces of his crew and discovered they agreed with equal measure to his view. Some even looked disgusted at the very notion of bait.

Semmes was a little taken aback at the rebuke. She was not a seasoned hunter to be sure, but to carelessly cast away her offer on such a trivial detail struck her as guiless nonsense. Also she hadn't been snapped at or so much as contradicted since she had taken command of the _Damacletian _and the words stung with surprising force. She hated being scoffed at, and she felt an unwelcome sense of humiliation swell in her chest. She didn't allow her emotions to surface, however, and proceeded coolly with her presentation. "The _Pioneer_ has 815 trained combatants skilled in escape and evasion, Chieftain. I would imagine such a prize would be worth your whole-hearted interest."

Gnan regarded the image on his viewer with undisguised skepticism. "Yet here you stand offering away your position," he pointed out. "Your skill at hiding seems fatally flawed."

_How blessed I am to have such idiots to match myself against,_ Angela Semmes gloated inwardly. Gnan had just given away control of the dialog and he lacked the wit to know it. "Very well, Gnan, where am I?" she teased.

Gnan turned to his com officer and his master tracker. They glanced at their stations to confirm what they had told Gnan before he answered the mysterious hale, and promptly did double takes. When they didn't look back at Gnan for a full minute, the Chieftain knew his rude caller had every right to feel secure facing him in such a fearless way.

"Having fun with your sensors, Gnan?" Semmes laughed.

"All Hirogen will hunt you down for this offense, blood-sack!" Gnan barked. "Disrupting our net is…"

"…Unforgivable?" Semmes interrupted cheerfully. She allowed a sliver of anger to stab into her words as she announced, "I don't care, Gnan. I am in control of our dealings, Hirogen, and if you expect me to respect your customs you shall be sadly disappointed. We will deal, and it will be on terms I dictate! IS THAT CLEAR?"

Gnan laughed. "Why should I deal with you?"

"Because there are 815 hunts you haven't indulged in being offered to you," Semmes said patiently. "If my research is correct that is four times the number of hunts your entire crew has been on. What would you offer for such a prize?"

Gnan was quite understandably suspicious and mulled over the offer for a while before answering. "In exchange for your life," he said at last, "You will give us the crew of the ship that destroyed Lord Heartstock's vessel?" He sounded both eager and skeptical.

Semmes managed not to giggle with delight. The Hirogen wore their feelings on their sleeve, as the old saying went, and by doing so could be easily led about by someone like herself who had the skill to exploit it. "I have a plan that will grant you a prize to savor for months and years to come," she said.

"Go on," Gnan said. "And what is this so-called 'perfect bait' you speak of?"

Inside the motion-capture chamber Semmes motioned at her lithe figure. "Why me of course," she said cheerfully.

What Gnan and his people saw was the image of Lieutenant David Cabrillo offering himself up to the most dangerous power in the 3KPC arm. Looking at his innocent face and listening to his young voice filled Gnan with a desire to hack the boy's spine from his back. A detailed approximation of the human's anatomy was already being studied for the most striking trophy by everyone on the ship. Still the offer was tempting; irresistible, if Gnan were honest with himself.

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Semmes gave the Hirogen Chieftain what little data they had on _Pioneer's_ trail and signed off. The plan was for the Hirogen to lure Koon into a confrontation he couldn't win. If that meant he and his crew were scattered about dozens of planets to be hunted down like elk, so much the better. The evidence would be so effectively obscured Semmes would never be linked to the tragedy. Angela knew Koon from a scant few assignments in the past along with her years pursuing him to the Core. She knew how proud he was of his people and he would agree to anything to preserve just a single life. Her reasoning was to let the Hirogen capture one or two of his officers, lure him into a squadron of Hirogen ships and force him to give up _Pioneer_ to save their lives. Janeway had done as much a time or two with _Voyager_, and Semmes felt Koon could be made to fall into line.

The puppeteer project had certainly been successful as far as she was concerned. The use of David Cabrillo's image stemmed from the wealth of information Cabrillo had provided over the years. Of everyone aboard Koon's command, young Cabrillo was the most diligent correspondent with those in the Federation. Semmes knew this because her people had captured and responded to all his letters for five years. The "Cabrillo department" had grown to a staff of ten overworked officers in Semmes' signals section. How the boy managed to produce such an extravagant volume of mail by himself was nothing short of extraordinary, but it also gave Semmes and her people the clearest picture of any mind they knew under Koon's command. Why the boy was so voluble was pretty clear: he was an outcast. He never spoke of a friend, never referred, never deferred, to a colleague, spoke longingly of home at every opportunity, and was beginning to gripe about being underappreciated. Had Cabrillo been a part of Semmes' crew he might have been pushed over the edge to suicide by now, but somehow Peyter Koon fostered an environment such a shy sort as David Cabrillo could manage in without undue agony. It was only a short leap of logic to attach bitter resentment to his character. In this way, Semmes planned that if the Hirogen somehow blabbed how they found _Pioneer_ to Koon; the finger pointing would be directed inward rather than her way. Perfect planning from all angles, she thought.

"Are we ready to reengage the cloak?" Semmes asked as she stepped out of the motion-capture chamber.

King nodded. He was convinced this project would be the undoing of _Damacletian_, but his Captain was not the sort to listen to that just now. Semmes was the sort of officer who preferred to have what she called "positive control" of her command. What it meant in practical terms was that she built a pyramid command structure with her at the top. Any action her crew took while on duty was under her close, if not always direct, scrutiny. That left King with a huge administrative workload, and very little input in the doings of the ship. That irritated his sensibilities greatly since all the other great Executive Officers, and indeed Captains, in Starfleet history were the product of a successful collaboration between Captain and First Officer. His role as a sounding board was nil and his input regarded with contempt by Semmes. She would listen to his suggestions but only if it represented a department and only if he forwarded it in executive session. Instead of playing an active part in the running of the ship, Commander King found himself in the dual role of Executive assistant and amateur councilor to all the ill will Semmes generated against her. He would present information in an orderly way and insulate Semmes from the crew and the crew from Semmes insofar as he could manage. He took immense pride in how high the moral of the crew was since Semmes had almost no role in promoting it. He was convinced the crew would mutiny in short order without him, but King was a true believer in the mission and a believer in Captain Semmes. She was a horrible, not to say cruel, woman, but she was a fine ship's Captain.

King was blinded by his faith in Section-31 to the larger issues at hand. The reason why he would have to wear this millstone that was Angela Semmes about his neck instead of commanding the _Damacletian _himself never occurred to him. From the conversations he eavesdropped in on with Admiral Forrestal and Semmes, his Captain was firmly footed in reality while the rest of Section-31 was preoccupied with the larger objectives of this mission. Namely controlling the Dominion. Admiral Forrestal and Admiral Richelieu felt the Dominion War was bound to be lost in the Alpha Quadrant and had to be won in the Gamma Quadrant and were thereby sending virtually all their heavy assets to the Gamma Quadrant by the circuitous rout of the Galactic Core thus opening up a front the Dominion was unable to defend against. Semmes vehemently argued they had no way of knowing this to be true, but took the assignment anyway since she figured she, as a skeptic, would prosecute the campaign with more methodical care than the distant Admirals back on Earth. King had to agree with his Captain. He knew her to be an effective, downright vicious tactician, and a far-thinking strategist, so if she was a total bitch on the side, that was the least of his worries and had to be borne to maintain civility.

The trouble was this _Pioneer_ tangent their mission couldn't seem to solve. Koon and his ship had to die. Section-31 had to remain forever blameless. It had to happen here in Hirogen territory since they were the only ones ever to face down the Borg effectively. Semmes had argued many times that direct action against Koon by her command would net two of the three conditions of a successful mission requirements, but Forrestal was adamant all three had to be fulfilled in order to take action. Appeals to Richelieu had yielded nothing but requests for mission requirements and an increased administrative workload: something Semmes hated above all things in life next to Peyter Koon himself by now.

And so they remained sidetracked out in the armpit of the Galaxy hunting and scheming to destroy one lousy _Nebula_-class ship six years from her nearest port of call that was apparently oblivious to the forces arrayed against her. Or so King and Semmes thought.

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M'rath couldn't credit Koon's trust. From his point of view, he deserved summary execution, but for some reason Captain Koon had airily dismissed that idea out of hand. Not only was he still breathing, but now he was out of his cell. To add to his consternation, Koon was now staring at him over his desk _in his office!_ The Romulan was forced to sink to new levels of astonishment when he learned what this man wanted from him.

"Lieutenant, Commander Speer and I agree something is wrong with this mission," Koon explained. "This trip has been too hard, too long, and too costly on all points to grant adequate credit for. Your role in the difficulties we've experienced has been shown to be marginal if not nonexistent after a careful study of your affects and duties. I want you to discover why we are having such a hard time of things."

"Meaning what?" M'rath asked suspiciously.

"We want you to take over the counterintelligence branch of security," Speer said standing next to Koon. "Signals, research, anything you can think of to safeguard this ship and this crew."

"We would like you to start going over the communications, private and otherwise we've been sending and receiving from Starfleet," Koon explained. "We discovered the three levels of encryption you used to communicate with your Romulan controllers, and we are impressed enough with your work we feel you would be ideal to spot this sort of thing elsewhere in the system."

"Tynee and I used five levels of encryption," M'rath confessed.

Speer heaved a great sigh, and Koon's careworn face split into a grin. "Told you he'd fess up," Koon chuckled.

"I'm not trained to expect that, Captain," Speer protested.

Koon turned back to M'rath and admitted, "You just passed a mild test in flying colors, Lieutenant. Congratulations."

"There were a total of seven layers of encryption possible, but the last two Tynee and I never used since it was obvious we were undetected," M'rath explained. "There is also an alternate set in the event of discovery."

"Like now?" Speer almost spat. Clearly he maintained the healthy degree of suspicion so lacking in his Captain. M'rath didn't blame him for an instant.

"Yes, like now," M'rath allowed calmly. "But I'm willing to explain the codes to you an any degree of detail you may wish if that will secure your trust, Captain, Commander," he said with a differential nod to each man in turn.

"Trust will be a major issue here," Speer warned.

"I am fully aware of that, sir, but I must admit I'm a little confused what you want me to look for in the message traffic," M'rath said.

"We're not sure either, Lieutenant," Koon said unhappily. "Anything is possible at this stage, but why don't you start with the current mission objectives. The message from Admiral Forrestal sending us to find _Voyager_ is the last one we received from Starfleet. From an operational standpoint it's a staggering coincidence this news should arrive right as our primary mission was supposed to begin."

"That's thin," M'rath said skeptically, "but it is more than a little odd I suppose. Is there anything I'm not allowed to see?"

"Just work closely with Commander Speer, and I'm more than comfortable with you snooping about, Lieutenant. One ground rule I must insist upon is the need for complete discretion where personal matters are concerned. Most likely you're going to see some things best left private. Do you understand?" Koon said.

M'rath had no way of knowing it, but Koon already had a fair idea of the sort of things M'rath was about to find. Okuma, reluctant gossip that she was, was a very proficient gossip just the same, and had filled Koon in on all sorts of goings on around the ship in no small detail. Koon found much of this talk as distasteful as Okuma did, but he saw the utility in it just as his First Officer did. Foremost in his mind was a number of affairs circulating about the ship including a fairly bitter one that had ended only recently with the demise of Lieutenant Commander Garrett and the _Lassen's Cutoff._ He'd gone through this sort of thing before as a First Officer, but prying into the private lives of others went against his nature even if he rarely, if ever, acted upon the information he found. People told the people they corresponded with things they didn't blurt to the person next to them and vise-versa, and the impression one got from seeing both sides of this equations was how duplicitous good manners and private opinions made everybody.

For his part the Romulan imagined all sorts of political and military secrets displayed for his casual perusal. A few weeks ago, and a lifetime gone by, M'rath would have jumped at the opportunity. Now he could only imagine anything he would rather do to sate his conscience instead of this chore. "How worried are you, Captain?" he asked hoping this was merely an exercise he could duck.

Koon assumed a grave expression that added years to his appearance. For the first time, M'rath noticed the man's hair was graying at the temples ever so slightly. The toll of his responsibility was clearly displayed in the man etched in well acquainted, bitterly earned, lines of care and stress across his face. M'rath could almost see the man slump down in his chair and hear the wheezing breath of elderly lungs from across the desk. "My people are dead and dying, Mr. M'rath," Koon said with quiet gravity. "My ship is broken, and I've been forced to run and hide from an enemy that wants the skulls of my crew for trophies. I'm frantic with worry, and you should be as well. We have no resources but each other, and I'm wondering how Starfleet would allow this to happen to us."

"You ordered the _Lassen's Cutoff_ into the Great Barrier, Captain. Starfleet ordered us to abandon the Core," M'rath said.

"Deeper into territory barren of resources," Koon countered. "Even after discussing it with Okuma at length, it strikes me as too capricious an order to make any sense especially since no mention was made of a fresh mission to meet us once we started on our way home."

"That's all?" M'rath asked incredulously.

"That's enough to warrant looking into the matter with a skilled eye," Koon said.

The Romulan rubbed his chin thoughtfully. For once, all that nonsense he'd been forced to soak up about logic and learning appealed to him. If nothing else, Vulcan habits were fantastic tools to order one's thoughts. Add to that the Romulan flair for conspiracy and Koon's concerns bloomed into several possible operational designs in short order. In fact the possibilities assaulted M'rath's mind with a blow not unlike one he'd exchanged with Heartstock no so long ago. Most of the operations his mind envisioned hinged upon the flow of information, and he knew he had to shut that flow down if he expected to protect _Pioneer._ "We need to dismantle the com system," M'rath announced after a long moment.

Koon and Speer exchanged a look of surprise. "Dismantle it?" Speer asked as if he hadn't heard M'rath correctly.

"Call it a system overhaul, but take it apart and keep it apart until I've completed my investigation," M'rath demanded.

"Why?" Speer asked.

M'rath understood Speer's reluctance for once. Dismantling the com system was not advisable under any circumstances since there was no telling when they would have to talk to someone. Patiently M'rath outlined his plans. "If I have to conduct an investigation and actively search for spies and saboteurs, much of my workload will be accomplished by this method."

"Meaning?" Speer demanded.

"Agents are all about information, Commander. Shut down the flow and their routines that formerly protected them begin to expose themselves. Personally I think only Tynee and I were aboard, but if an operation within Starfleet were in place the com system is our only link to the controllers. Shut the controllers off, and any system they have in place will either expose itself or shut down if our encounter with the flare hasn't accomplished that already," M'rath said.

"Approved," Koon said. "I'll tell Eddie to start right away. Adam, guard our remaining shuttles with some discreet guards and put our com officer in one of them to keep tabs on our away mission. We already have a com silence order in effect so that officer shouldn't be very busy. Mr. M'rath, I need you to get started."

"Aye, sir," M'rath replied accepting his first order as a full member of the crew. As he walked from Koon's office he was struck with how eager he was to start this assignment. He wondered why, and even went so far as to ask Speer who was taking him to his new post in the security locker.

Speer seemed puzzled by the question. "Your motivation is a complete mystery to me, Romulan," he growled unhappily.

M'rath found himself wanting this man as a friend. His stubborn nature and devotion to his Captain would have been admired in Romulan society, and M'rath could imagine himself taking his ease over drinks swapping stories with Speer without much effort. M'rath's own father would have taken an instant liking to the man for these reasons and dubbed him, "a worthy enemy," to use his turn of phrase. No doubt it was not going to be an overnight process to earn Speer's trust, but if M'rath did his new job right, they'd have time to sort this out. "I won't let you down, Commander," he announced. "I'll earn your trust."

Speer stopped and spun about to thrust his face in M'rath's. His expression was one of bitter anger, and the cryogenic patch over his eye only made the look more sinister like a sightless orb shoved hastily in the man's head to rot his mind with pain and evil thoughts. "You've earned my trust, M'rath," Speer snarled, "but don't you dare break it again." He leaned back and added with a little less venom, "I tend to take a dim view of that sin."


	7. Atoll

**Chapter 7: Atoll**

_Pioneer_ arrived in the Cove system eight days after Okuma's team. Captain Koon himself sat at the helm. He'd made the decision after a long conversation with Samantha about Cove-3's eligibility for the refit. What Sam told him was alarming. Not the least of which was the confirmation rather than the dismissal of Dr. Totem's estimate of the ionic gasses inhabiting the system in dangerous densities. The flying would be tricky. With Forte and Kree unavailable, Koon saw little choice but to perform the task himself.

Despite the dangers, Cove-3's smaller moon held something very special for their purposes: a huge cavern under one-tenth gravity. Okuma explained it would hold _Pioneer_ with room to spare. In addition, Cove-3 had a huge set of Van Allen belts that pushed the explosive gas away from the moon. It was a gem Koon was anxious to exploit but getting there was far from easy.

Koon would have to bring the huge vessel into the system at warp 1, slip into Cove-3's orbit, and park _Pioneer_ in the cavern without crashing. Peyter was not as concerned as everyone else. He'd been the best pilot of his day after all, and this was the sort of thing he thrived on.

At warp 1, it took _Pioneer_ three hours to traverse the system from the outer ice belts, to Cove-3's orbit. It was the first chance Totem and Spaulding had to examine the system up close, and what they saw racing past them was both reassuring and baffling. Cove had nine enormous planets beyond the inner asteroid belt. The outer ice giants were surprisingly large, ranging in size from slightly larger than Uranus to two almost identical planets on the scale of Saturn. They shone brightly in the gloom of their cold orbits. Cove-11 actually glowed an eerie blue from a vast ocean of radon under a thin atmosphere of helium. Cove-9 shone a brilliant green in the light of the distant star and supported better than fifty rocky moons. The first of the gas giants was a majestic orange-yellow leviathan tipping the scales at better than four times the size of Jupiter. It plodded along at a stately pace around the star in an unhurried manner. Even at warp 1 it took twenty minutes to get past its magnetic field. Koon used the gravity of the world to swing him past Cove-6 and almost cut it too close. Cove-6 was a runt living dangerously between the orbits of its larger sisters. Barely the size of Earth, the rocky world managed to survive consumption by Cove-7 and Cove-5 by skirting the inner asteroid belts that had so impressed Forte upon the advance team's arrival. It sheltered under the diffuse gravity of the asteroids to keep from straying out of its orbit much like a man holding onto a thin safety line while walking along a narrow ledge. Unfortunately for Cove-6, the static energies in constant play between the asteroids pummeled the dwarf constantly. From up close, Cove-6 looked like an angry white flash of ball lightning slowly rolling around the static storm of the asteroid belt. Koon slipped over the north pole of the planet and almost got yanked out of warp by the most brilliant aurora he'd ever seen. _Pioneer_'s warp field accidentally strayed too close to Cove-6 and lifted the polar aurora off the planet. Had the ship been traveling any faster, the static energies could have destroyed the warp field. Two things prevented this from happening: _Pioneer_'s slow speed and Eddie Gordon's experience with the "potholes" out in the 3KPC arm. Two years before he'd worked out a way for the warp field around the ship to flex and distend without affecting the mass of _Pioneer_ itself. It worked like a huge shock absorber around the ship that only became more effective in the low warp numbers. With a bright flash of lightning, and an audible bang through the hull, _Pioneer_ slipped past Cove-6 and dropped the static fingers of its aurora. Koon knew it had been a close call, but he wasn't concerned. Even if he had dropped out of warp over Cove-6, he was confident he could fly his ship into a safe orbit. Plans to reach Cove-3 might be delayed, but only by a few hours.

The next part of the flight was a long arc over the asteroids. The reason he'd skirted so dangerously close to Cove-6 in the first place was to get the biggest push from its gravity he could manage. The gravity of Cove-5 was so massive; it would have pulled _Pioneer_ straight through the asteroids unless he got the smaller world to lob the ship over them. Cove-5 was the biggest thing short of a star anyone aboard _Pioneer_ had ever seen. Tipping the scales at eight times the mass of Jupiter, it had a large set of magnificent rings tipped into the light of the star. This odd world, despite its size, was devoid of moons. The rings were made of rock and sodium mixed with a little phosphorus making them perhaps the most volatile object ever seen by the eyes of men. The magnetic field of the massive world kept all the explosive gas permeating the system at a distance, but it would only take a stray spark inside the rings to set them off like a magnesium flare. _Pioneer_ gave the giant and its rings a wide berth. Koon saw no reason for a showy run past the place with a magnetic field that would serve his purposes at a respectable distance. Even so, the churning clouds of Cove-5 dominated the attention of everyone near a portal for almost half an hour until it receded completely from view.

With Cove-4 well out of line of their flight path, the next thing anyone saw up close was their target of Cove-3 and the tiny spec of a moon that was where the running ship would try to hide away and heal her wounds.

Peyter deftly tapped a command into the helm, and the 300-meter-long ship dropped out of warp over the surface of the planet. Cove-3's gravity snatched the ship out of orbit as soon as it flickered into existence, and the ship skidded along the atmosphere like a rock skipping off a pond. Peyter activated the dying impulse engines for the last time and was rewarded with a lurch throughout the ruined ship. Gordon had warned him the things would melt if he used them, so Peyter decided there was no sense in sparing them anyway. He carefully watched the velocity rise to the desired speed, and checked his orientation to the orbit of the moon. He hesitated for one second… another… then he overloaded the engines with an emergency burn.

The impulse engines coughed, roared to agonized life for two seconds and exploded. The ship jumped as if stung, and broke free of the planet below. Behind her she trailed a fine wisp of ruined impulse cones reduced to shards by the overload. Gravity managed to slow the ship a trifle, but not enough to pull her back to the surface of Cove-3 and certain destruction.

Ahead of the ship lay a small moon dubbed "Atoll" by Okuma. Little more than a fragment of a much larger moon that had been blasted away ages ago by a collision with Cove's other, far larger, moon, Atoll was the accumulation of several meteors that might have struck Cove-3 had the mass of the small moon not been so attractive about its regular orbit. Koon focused on the cratered surface searching for his target. The cavern was in the shadow of a jagged canyon fifteen kilometers wide and seventy deep. "Carlsbad," as all called the cave, was sixty kilometers from the bottom of this huge gash in Atoll. Okuma claimed the canyon walls were sheer around the entrance. Once Koon slipped under the sway of Atoll's feeble gravity, he would be able to use the maneuvering thrusters in safety since all the exhaust gas would drop to the surface. Still, it was a narrow target to hit after a long trip.

The next few minutes were tense, as Atoll grew larger in the main viewer. Koon could see the texture of the moon, but the canyon would only be a shadow until they descended into it.

When the image of Atoll filled the screen, Koon saw the smallest motion on the surface. A moment later, the familiar form of a shuttle rushed up to meet them.

"Right where you needed to be, Captain," Okuma hailed. "Glad you could make it."

"Nothing's changed since we spoke yesterday, I take it?" Koon asked cheerfully.

"Nope," Okuma confirmed. "It'll be perfect, I swear."

Koon did not doubt Samantha, but his instincts were screaming at him to veer away from the certain collision staring him in the face.

"The moon has us, sir," Hurst said a moment later.

"Can you see Carlsbad?" Koon asked.

"Oddly no," Hurst said. He was scouring the surface of Atoll where they expected to find it, and his sensors were finding the canyon, but no cavern. "The canyon is as they described," he said hesitantly. He tried and failed to keep the nervous tension out of his voice, but no one blamed him for an instant for it. They were all in for this ride, and it was bound to be a wild one.

"Tactical, give me a target blip to steer by," Koon ordered.

Carrie Locke was so nervous she had to try three times to comply with Koon's order. With trembling fingers, she finally keyed in the command that integrated the image of the moon below them with the data Okuma sent them. A yellow triangle appeared on the screen inside a narrow shadow across the surface of Atoll.

"Christ! That's a tight spot!" Speer gasped.

"Fuck it anyway, it'll stretch," Koon said calmly. He appeared only mildly focused on the problem. His expression was almost vacant as he started lighting off the thrusters.

_Pioneer_ gently pitched up and exposed her broad belly to Atoll. She slowed slightly, but the faint gravity of the moon brought her back up to speed. The ship fell into the canyon a minute later, and Koon decided it was time to slow the ship considerably.

The maneuvering thrusters lit off like a white halo around the ship. Ordinarily considered the bastard stepchild of all drives, they were the most powerful ever built. No one knew exactly why _Nebula_-class was graced with such an outsized system, but no helmsman ever complained about it. By comparison the larger _Galaxy_-class was downright deficient in this regard, and it took a nervy pilot to heave the big ships about a spacedock or drydock. The _Nebula_ ships could be ham-fisted around by a novice pilot and still nestle on a martini glass without shattering it.

"Activate running lights," Koon ordered. In an instant the ship shone like an arc light. In the displays the intense light revealed the stark walls of the canyon as they raced by with the suicidal speed.

Still the ship had to slow down quite a lot before she crashed into the canyon floor, and outsized thrusters or not, _Pioneer_ was a heavy ship. The canyon walls raced past her as if the palm of a cold, dark hand sought to grasp her. Okuma's shuttle darted past the larger craft and stopped to shine its landing lights on the entrance to Carlsbad.

Koon realized he was not going to stop his descent in time to slip inside the opening. He scanned the walls of the canyon and flinched when he saw they met at the bottom of the gorge in a sharp V. He ran the risk of running out of room, but there was no helping it. He allowed the ship to drop right past the cavern opening much to Okuma's surprise.

"Sir?" she asked over the com.

"I'd rather not bounce the ship off the floor of that opening, Commander," Koon said. "I'll be back up in a minute."

The ship dropped like an elevator gone mad. The canyon walls began to squeeze in towards the hull of the ship. Koon rotated the nose back down towards the canyon floor facing the sharp profile into the canyon as the room between the steep walls of stone began to run out. The rate of descent unwound with agonizing slowness to the speed of a turbolift, to the speed of a skydiver, to the speed of a running man, to the speed of a brisk walk, and still _Pioneer_ would not stop.

Ten kilometers from the bottom her saucer scraped a few protruding boulders off the canyon walls; sending a grating, rattling sound through the ship that made everyone cringe.

Finally, the ship shuddered to a stop with barely fifty meters of clear space to either side of the ship.

"Eddie?" Koon called out over the com.

Gordon, until recently convinced his ship was about to smash headlong into an unknown moon, stammered in his thickest Cockney, "Wha' now, you fookin' Rusky, arse'ole!"

"Tell me again about the new ship dimensions," Koon asked calmly. "I'd like to trim a meter or two off the saucer before I try this again." He keyed in a few commands and _Pioneer_ slowly heaved her bulk back up the canyon wall towards the cavern fifty kilometers above them.

A minute later, the ship eased inside Carlsbad. "Truly impressive, Commander," Koon said. The cavern dwarfed the ship by a factor of three at the very least. The floor of the chamber was covered in a thick layer of powdery soil while the walls were sheer, smooth surfaces all the way to the ceiling. What caught everyone's attention were the walls themselves.

"We checked and your eyes aren't deceiving you," Okuma almost giggled.

The walls of Carlsbad shone with the lustrous yellow of pure gold. Not veined, not dotted here and there… SOLID GOLD!

"We've scanned the chamber and the gold is a consistent five meters thick in all the walls and ceiling. The floor under the regolith goes down another ten meters before it changes over to granite," Okuma explained.

"Dazzling!" Hurst blurted. "There must be enough here to fill the Rhine to its banks!"

"Try the Nile or the Amazon," Okuma corrected. "Lieutenant Sakar grew up in Cairo, and he drew that very analogy. Even spent a night of calculating to prove it."

"What's it doing here?" Hurst asked rhetorically.

Okuma's tone turned uncertain, "That's something I thought we might ask our Hirogen guest. We found some things on the planets that indicate this place is only the tip of the iceberg."

"Such as?" Koon asked.

"The water isn't here because somebody took it," Okuma said. "Somebody harvested every drop of water out of this entire system and ran off with it."

"Yet they left this behind," Hurst said in wonder.

"You don't know the half of it, Willie," Okuma said. "There are cities down on the planet made like this."

"What is this, a fairy tail?" Locke asked.

"Makes you wonder what's in the junkyards," Hurst said with a dry laugh.

"That must be a sight," Koon agreed. "Congratulations, Commander, the discovery of El Dorado and the seven cities of gold has fallen to you."

"Pizzaro must be turning in his grave," Okuma agreed bleakly. "He was waaaaay off."

--

Koon nestled the ship in a spot Shin and Kree had cleared of dust.

Okuma insisted there were things the scientists had to see on Cove-2, 3, and 4 plus a bunch of things they needed to investigate on the other planets.

Totem and Spaulding digested the data Okuma had already. Gleefully they sent their scientists to all corners of the system by the shuttle load. Totem in particular was thrilled with the archaeology and anthropology of the three habitable worlds. Soon a thick atmosphere was discovered on a moon orbiting Cove-9, followed the next day by another around Cove-8. Totem delighted in every new discovery till rapture.

"This wasn't what I had in mind, Captain," Totem confessed the day after they arrived. "I signed on for First Contact missions, but Cove…" he trailed off. The reptilian scientist did not usually grope for words, but Cove had taken him completely by surprise.

"I'm glad we stumbled upon the place, Doctor," Koon said cheerfully. "That Cabrillo kid couldn't have known the extent of what we'd find."

"There's generations of research here, Captain," Totem explained. "It's a find an academic dares not dream about. If we don't discover another soul from here to the Delta Quadrant, the mission will be worth our while after this place."

Spaulding was less reflective in his assessment. "A golden cave, abandoned cities, stolen water, and a ring of static discharge so powerful it must orbit the sun between the gas giants!" he said. "Unbelievable: in a word. Simply unbelievable! And we've only just begun!"

--

Eddie Gordon knew he had to let his people gawk at the cavern before anything meaningful was accomplished, so he sent them outside in spacesuits to start building the drydock. Everyone stared at the place. No one had ever imagined so much gold. The practical upshot of the gold was almost laughable: light bounced around so badly in the cavern that the dimmest illumination produced a warm glow all around the ship. Once the more powerful lights were in place, the whole cavern was bright as a sunny day. Another benefit to the gold was its density. _Pioneer's_ sensors could not see outside the chamber, and the assumption was the gold shrouded the ship just as thoroughly from the outside. Overall, it was the safest hidey-hole anyone had ever seen. Eddie hoped it wouldn't become a golden cage.

Lieutenant Commander Edmund Gordon wondered how he'd gotten into this mess. Relentless work, long hours, blood, sweat, and the threatening tears had yielded nothing _again._ Like many a Chief engineer, Eddie regarded his ship with almost parental affection, and right now his child was sick, possibly dying. The Flare had crippled _Pioneer_, but it was akin to a broken arm or leg next to the damage surrounding him presently. The Hirogen had gutted whole sections of the ship, and extensively damaged main engineering. The warp core was fine, but all the controls to it along with all the monitors had been blown away. It had taken two days of frantic work to rig something up just for the sake of safety. Luckily, the control linkage to the bridge was largely in tact, so the real danger from the core was computer error. Eddie was willing to take calculated risks, but the warp core was just one of hundreds of calculated risks he was allowing to take place. He wasn't a gambling man so the precarious, if operational, status of his ship didn't sit well with him.

Gordon was a cheerful man by nature. Everyone who worked with or under him assumed he was just the near side of a slacker, but that masked the care he lavished on his ship. He was a man who craved order and harmony. He believed in preventative maintenance and harmonious crews. It was better to put in a little work every day than put in a lot of work here and there. He also saw to it his engineers worked well in teams by various means. While he didn't handle all disagreements with his people, nobody distrusted his arbitration. He was regarded fondly and considered both fair and easy to please. He'd pushed his people to the limit for the last two months, but he'd pushed himself harder. Commander Okuma occasionally interfered with his efforts to maintain the delicate balance between work and crew cohesion in recent weeks, but everyone was working so hard they barely noticed.

His need for order and desire for harmony was more than just good business; Eddie desperately needed things to be this way. He couldn't stand to see his engineers quarrel, and he saw the well-mannered workings of the ship as a means to keep the good feelings strong in his crew.

As a child, Eddie had grown up in a household fraught with dysfunction. His parents had divorced, remarried, divorced again, and remarried others twice over. Young Eddie had been bounced from house to house in Portsmouth, England for years while the adults around him flew apart like cherry bombs. He'd learned the value of silence as a young boy since his self-absorbed parents were liable to send him away if he made the slightest fuss. He loved his parents and he tried to love his stepparents, but it was hard for a young boy to understand what was happening around him. Eventually he learned to pick the hidden meanings out of the things adults told him, and what he found out as time went on didn't encourage him. Adults regarded him as a nuisance. Often as not, they didn't know what to do with him on any given day. They'd send him to school to forget about him for the rest of the day while they went about more important things. Bad grades were regarded with indifference while good grades were ignored with smug satisfaction.

His experience with his family turned Eddie into a good listener, and it made him many friends. The trouble was he was constantly in contact with his friend's families, and what he saw was agonizing for him. Most of his friends came from unbroken homes. Their parents gave him more attention and affection than his own, and they were mystified why such a well-behaved boy spent so much time with them over the company of their children. When Eddie did go home to his mother's or father's house, he did almost everything alone and spoke little.

Things might have stayed that way were it not for the last two of his stepparents. Nina Frobisher Gordon married his father when Eddie was thirteen. Barely into her twenties herself, Nina was frightened by the prospect of having a stepson not even ten years younger than she was. Despite her love for Eddie's father, the quiet teenager lurking around the house unnerved her. Unlike her father and all his other wives, Nina wasn't about to live in a house where she felt unwelcome. She was a secretary by training, and it left her with an abiding sense for what was out of place. Eddie was something that was hopelessly adrift in the house. While he wasn't rude, destructive, or threatening, young Eddie was small, pale, and depressed. Nina couldn't stand to see him this way. Every morning, she made a point of checking his daily schedule at school and discussing each as though it were a business meeting. At first, Eddie thought she was being nosey for some reason he'd have to be wary of, but he soon forgot about that. Nina had a great memory for names and faces along with a nose for gossip that translated into well-developed social instincts. In a few weeks, she was chatting away at him about her life and luring details of his daily routine from him. It was the first time an adult had included him in their lives or expressed an abiding concern for his. The shift was so subtle he barely noticed how much he looked forward to seeing Nina every morning. It was Nina who coaxed him gently out of his shell, and much to his surprise, she was delighted with the young man she found hiding behind the silence. She began to tell his father about what a wonderful son he had which in turn turned his father's attention his way. Without understanding how it had happened, Eddie suddenly had a family.

The next step came when he was fifteen. His mother married a rather rumpled man named Charles Raul. Nothing about Charley Raul was quiet. Nothing about Charley Raul was gloomy, and he made an effort to shine his cheerful energies into every corner of his house. Charley wasn't the smartest man around, but he was hard working, honest, and loved life. He possessed a wicked sense of humor and told the filthiest jokes as casually as reading the morning news. Eddie never once heard the man utter a discouraging sound or a word or criticism that wasn't optimistically constructive. It was easy to see why his mother loved Charley: he filled every room with joy, laughter, and optimism. She lost two kilos due to Charley keeping her talking and laughing too much to eat as much at the dinner table. Unlike Nina, Charley didn't have to discover Eddie and tease him into the light. Charley was one of those rare people who others opened up to naturally. Charley arrived and created an atmosphere that demanded good will and openness. He never understood why others claimed his stepson was such a quiet boy since he couldn't get Eddie to shut up. Not that he minded. It was Charley who encouraged Eddie to go into sports, it was Charley who encouraged Eddie to apply to the Academy, and it was Charley who broke the ice with all Eddie's girlfriends before dances, dates, and dinners.

Between Nina and Charley, Eddie managed to navigate his way through his teenage and Academy years without the gloom of his early years. Nobody would understand the difference other than Eddie and to a lesser extent Nina. Much to Eddie's disappointment, his parents remained blissfully ignorant of what a fine son they had, and that had been the final, very bitter, blow to his attachment to them.

After his first cruise out of the Academy, Eddie Gordon found himself under the command of Commander Peyter Koon. Eddie was drawn to the fatherly gentleman almost at once. Koon had a way of expressing heartfelt concern that made Eddie eager to please the man. He'd thrown himself into his work and Koon had rewarded him with promotions and greater responsibilities. In the short span of four years, Eddie found himself go from an Ensign fresh out of the Academy, to a Lieutenant Commander and Chief engineer aboard _Pioneer_. He knew he was young for the position, but Koon's faith in him never wavered.

_Pioneer_ was something Eddie was justifiably proud of. Koon had given him a very free hand from the moment Eddie had set foot aboard. He'd been given a green, inexperienced, largely untried crew of engineers and officers and almost no senior NCO's. On the surface, this was a mistake, but Eddie had turned the lack of experience into an opportunity. If nobody aboard understood something, Eddie turned the search for a solution into a competition. If there was a dispute, Eddie could play the attentive listener or the elder brother. He rarely had to pull rank (unless Garrett or Okuma were involved) and he built a team unlike any in the fleet. He rarely had to tell anyone what to do. "There's no such thing as 'my job' or 'your job' on this ship," he said often. "Everything needs to be done no matter who's around." Borrowing a page out of his stepfather's book, he did everything he could to promote a "can do" attitude around the ship. "I'll find out," was the usual response to an unknown answer, and there was typically enthusiasm expressed to get started with the investigation. There was a level of creativity and energy aboard _Pioneer_ the rest of the fleet would find shocking. Koon rewarded this with near blind trust. Okuma tried to impose a more orderly regimen on Eddie's department, but Koon refused to enforce it. Garrett tried to change things to more standard procedures, but Eddie overruled him.

Nobody guessed the reasons behind Gordon's eccentric command style, but in a crisis they appreciated the experience he spread around so liberally. It made for a crew of generalists and few specialists, but when everything was broken, Eddie didn't have to shuffle his people from place to place. Also all of Gordon's people were very free with the information they exchanged. He couldn't count the number of times it paid off to have a healthy professional grapevine spreading information about the ship. Lieutenant Shin often complained the engineers had no communication discipline, but Eddie refused to stop the chatter. If everyone knew what was going on, everyone had a personal stake in seeing things done right and done well. It wouldn't have worked under any other Captain other than Koon and no other Chief Engineer than Gordon, but it worked well.

Among the crew, Eddie Gordon was one of the few who had no plans to return home. His parents had moved on to other spouses as had Nina and Charley, and he had no siblings. England held no charms for him, only loads of bitter memories with a brief moment of grace that saved him. His family was his crew, _Pioneer_ was his home, and Captain Peyter Koon was the father he privately acknowledged. He'd left no wife or children behind. Indeed nobody aboard _Pioneer_ except Koon, Spaulding, and Totem had left those behind. He'd kept himself so busy over the years, he barely noticed passing into his thirties. There'd never been a steady girl since the Academy, but somehow it didn't matter. He didn't know how he'd fit a woman into his life. Assuming they would eventually return to Earth, he'd be an old man approaching seventy, but the mild loneliness created by a lack of romance in his life he felt was bearable. The loneliness of his childhood loomed large in his imagination, and nothing he'd experienced in Starfleet could compare to it.

Still, the job could be frustrating. Aside from the garden-variety mishaps, the sheer scale of the present project was daunting. In addition, he'd been running at full-throttle for two months. The occasional catnaps and rare showers were wearing him down along with his people. It didn't help many of them were staggering around with injuries and despairing lost comrades. They were demanding more and more of Eddie, and he was eager to help, but there was only so much time he could give before one day ran into the next.

The refit was going to be nothing short of brutal on his people. Even inside a golden cave, they had to build a drydock around the ship, separate the saucer section from the drive section, rebuild the nacelles and their outriggers, tear down the drive section, tear down the saucer section, and rebuild everything into a new design nobody had ever tested. It was ambitious to say the least, but Eddie knew everything had to be done. "We need a craft capable of navigating the Great Barrier and the 3KPC arm, Eddie," Koon had told him after the Hirogen attack. "Build me one," he ordered.

Eddie wasn't in the habit of disappointing Koon, and he wasn't about to start now. The design he'd come up with was radically different from the _Nebula_-class, but there was a reason for that. Wille Hurst had compiled the findings from the Great Barrier and the Flare and made a startling discovery or two along the way. The first was a concept Okuma had brought up when they first received their orders to recover _Voyager_. No warp core ever built could be expected to propel a ship at high warp numbers and support a large crew for much more than twelve years without a rebuild. Okuma had suggested they harvest energy off the Great Barrier along the way, and Hurst had stumbled upon a way to do it.

When he'd told Eddie about his findings, one of his engineers had figured out a way to make the Barrier give them a push through subspace at incredible speeds without undue strain on the warp core. Lieutenant Emily Blackburn was the most senior engineer after Eddie now that Garrett was gone, and she had a passion for speed. After a brief explanation of what she had in mind, Eddie decided there was no better way to get to the Delta Quadrant. The problem was the concept Blackburn and Hurst worked out required a drastically different hull geometry. The fat, clamshell saucer section would cause unacceptable buffet from the slow fusion gasses and rip it off the ship at the speeds Emily and Wille proposed. Consequently, Eddie had done the modeling and developed a hull design that would work.

The result was different from anything anyone had ever seen. Koon had taken one look and blurted, "I want to command that ship!"

The next thing was the constant problems with the warp core getting out here in the first place. Eddie knew they couldn't count on the luxury of stopping every couple of weeks to overhaul the core, so something had to be done to shield or alter the warp core to make it more durable. Fortunately, Eddie had stumbled upon something Garrett had left behind.

Lieutenant Commander Garrett had been a constant thorn in Gordon's side. Secretly convinced he should be Chief engineer instead of Eddie, the man worked out his frustrations by squandering his duty hours on private projects. In another day and age, Garrett would have been a brilliant inventor. He was a creative dynamo. Ideas flowed from his mind in a steady profusion of practical gadgets and wild concepts. That he frittered his time away with these things instead of working with everyone else annoyed Gordon, but some of the gadgets were too handy to set aside and his concepts were well ahead of their time. One of these concepts was a new, very efficient warp core. The trouble was, the whole power grid had to be redesigned to accommodate the thing. Since they were rebuilding the ship anyway, Eddie judged this to be the only opportunity to put Garrett's genius to the test.

On the surface, this radical redesign of the ship only made more work for a job that was bound to be labor intensive, but Eddie knew they'd have to rebuild the ship anyway. On the trickle of power the old core was putting out, they could offload the whole works and rebuild without much fuss. They'd have to harvest antimatter from a fresh source, but the Great Barrier had pockets of the material floating in sufficient profusion to make that a simple matter. Outfitting a shuttle for the chore would take an afternoon and the trip to harvest it would take a month for a round trip, but it was going to take two to three months to complete the refit anyway. As a safety precaution, Eddie was going to rebuild the existing core in the event the new one didn't work. Otherwise, he thought he might find a use for it elsewhere.

At the end of the first day inside Carlsbad, the scaffolds for the drydock ringed _Pioneer_ and the next watch had smoothly moved into the next phase. During the night, they separated the saucer and put it on a scaffold. Eddie, going on five days without sleep by this time, set to work removing the warp core with a team of crewmen. It was a night of hard, back-breaking labor, and Eddie collapsed into his office chair at the start of the next shift in the morning. They would begin the tedious task of offloading the gear stowed aboard each deck so that they could be dismantled.

It was simple work that didn't require supervision by engineers to any great extent, so Eddie decided the time had come for a nap. He meant to move to his quarters, but he slumped at his desk without realizing it. When he rolled off his chair and crashed to the deck, he continued to snore without letup.

--

Tylan found him there three hours later. At first, she thought he was playing one of his many jokes on her. His posture on the deck was so absurd; she couldn't imagine it could be comfortable.

Eddie lay propped against the bulkhead with his rump in the air and his face and shoulders planted on the deck. His long legs were tangled in his chair and kept him from straightening out. Tylan wanted to laugh. He looked like he was listening for moles in the ground.

To top it all off, he was wheezing out the most intricate snore Tylan had ever heard. _SNNN…wheet… glug-glug, phew, snnn…wheet…glug-glug, phew…_Followed by a chocking sound she thought he would suffocate from only to have the whole mess start over again with a loud whistle through his nose.

Tylan moved around the desk and rolled him off the bulkhead. The snoring stopped at once, but Eddie didn't stir.

She took the opportunity to study his sleeping profile. Edmund Gordon was a handsome man she thought. He had a broad, open face with a square jaw. His careworn brow that had the first hint of the craggy features he was maturing into. She loved his eyes even though they weren't open at the moment. They were a startling, chilly gray that disarmed those around him with a dose of unease before he set them twinkling. He'd once confessed to her he'd been late to start his growth, but it was hard to believe looking at the bulky man. He had the shoulders like a dinner table, and the barrel chest of a wrester. Thickly chorded, very long arms ended in large, long fingered hands. While not the tallest man around, he stood a head taller than Tylan. Looking down on his sleeping form instead of looking up into his smiling face, she thought he looked adorable.

Unfortunately Eddie was exhausted and it showed even in sleep. His skin had grown pale and thin under the strain. It made him look older than his thirty-three years. His thick brown hair was falling out in clumps from the strain. He'd lost weight. It was enough to cause a maternal pang of concern in Tylan. She sensed Eddie's mind wasn't relaxing. Instead his brain was mulling over the problems of the day with the same intensity he needed while awake. As she noted this, she saw his lips mouth words as if he were requesting parts or counting items. That would never do. Tylan knew he'd wake up even more exhausted than when he'd passed out if she couldn't find a way to shut him down soon.

When she started working with Eddie seven years ago, he'd been a nuisance. He was constantly cracking jokes, clowning around, and generally making her job of keeping her Vulcan composure an order of magnitude more difficult. By accident he found out she was ticklish along her sides, and he never missed an opportunity to make her jump about ever since. His one saving grace was that he never went beyond the bounds she insisted on. If she told him not to tickle her, he would smile and keep his hands to himself. If she told him to cut out the clowning, he would turn reflective and ask about the details of her day. He always tried to clown around at first, but he was respectful when she insisted upon it.

She barely noticed how good a listener he was until a particularly bad episode with M'rath.

She'd felt an attraction to Edmund Gordon for about three years, but her involvement with M'rath complicated any notion on acting on this affection. For starters, M'rath was intensely possessive of her. Romulan men were famously jealous lovers and Romulan laws regarding female infidelity were draconian. In private, he accused Tylan of all manner of escapades without cause or evidence. After forty years of this treatment, Tylan's pride had been eroded to nervous shreds.

M'rath vented his frustrations with his duty to the Tal'Shiar on her. This usually took the form of running her pride into the ground. After enduring three hours of belittling abuse from her partner, she'd fled to her lab to forget about M'rath, Romulus, the Tal'Shiar, and the purpose she was supposed to serve in Starfleet.

That day she'd bumped into Eddie along the way. She could keep her stoic composure in place while her emotions ran wild inside her mind so the face that she turned up to make her excuses to the man was as blank as any other day when she wasn't upset. "Excuse me, Commander," she said calmly.

Eddie stared at her for a long time without moving or speaking. He was blocking the corridor, and appeared to have forgotten where he was going. His expression was one of puzzlement. He cocked his head quizzically to the side then tilted it the other way. After a long, uncomfortable silence he asked, "What size shoe do you wear?"

The question was so surprising; she almost forgot her argument with M'rath. A flash of blank shock crossed her face before she could stop it.

A wide smile spread across Eddie's face. "You see," he chuckled, "You're standing on my foot." He pointed a finger down to the deck, and sure enough, Tylan was standing one of his outsized feet.

She quickly stepped back from Eddie, but he wasn't satisfied. "Do it again," he demaned.

"What?" she blurted completely at a loss what to make of the man.

Eddie pulled her to him and lifted her off the deck. He waltzed her around for two twirls before setting her down again. Immediately upon regaining her feet, Tylan slapped him.

"You shouldn't be so familiar with me, Commander," she hissed. "I could report you to the Captain."

Eddie continued to smile. "I knew there was spirit in you, Tylan," he confided in a gentle tone. "What has you so worked up today?"

The notion he was seeing right through her shocked Tylan. She felt suddenly naked under his cheerful gaze.

"Come with me," he ordered with a smile. To insure she obeyed, he took her by the hand and dragged her along behind him. He led her to the galley and plopped a hot fudge Sunday before her once they arrived. Over the next half hour, he watched her eat the ice cream and stared at her with an oblivious smile. As a way to break the tension, she began to talk. As was her habit, she avoided talking about what was really on her mind, but Eddie listened attentively. Like the big brother she'd never had, he walked her through the rat-race of her thoughts with a few kind words and quite a few baited comments intended to get a rise out of her.

Tylan doubted Eddie felt any attraction to her. Baiting Vulcans into displays of emotion was a popular sport among humans, but this episode stuck in her mind as special. Though she never hinted at what was on her mind, Eddie somehow knew she was deeply troubled. Most men would insist on attacking the issue directly, but Eddie was content to sooth her any way he could. He listened to everything that wasn't bothering her while she worked out what was bothering her silently in her mind. It was surprising how well it worked.

When he'd finally allowed her to go her way, he'd told her get some rest, and work off some tension. It was all the proper things a commanding officer should say, but she found herself fighting the urge to embrace him and weep in the circle of his arms. She'd never come so close to losing her Vulcan composure, and thereafter she craved Eddie's presence. It wasn't his willingness to listen; rather she felt a strong urge to tell him everything anyway. He was so easy to talk to. She sensed she could unload on him for hours, and his sympathy would never waver.

In the years since, she'd spent no more time than she had to around him for fear of blowing her cover, but she found the few moments with him to be refreshing at every turn.

Even watching his sleeping form on the deck was refreshing. It was thrilling to know she could bend over, touch his face, kiss his lips, and Eddie would never know. To prove her point she indulged in the experiment. She carefully locked the door and returned to his side. She balanced herself so that she didn't rest any of her weight on him, and reached for his face. Her fingers trembled as they brushed his cheek. Her breath became short as the tremor raced up her arm and settled in the center of her chest. Tenderly she traced her fingers over his lips. She felt her throat thicken with desire. As she lowered her face to his, she had to keep her eyes wide open lest she spill the tears onto his face and risk waking him.

The kiss was extraordinary. He didn't respond, but it was immensely fulfilling. She noticed her hammering heart slow down in time with his. The lust she felt for him eased its hold on her soothed by the simple pleasure of his touch. In the warmth of her lips to his, her mind cast aside concerns, anxieties, fears, and doubts. In its place was a calm pool of relief. She almost collapsed on top of him the experience was so overwhelming. Drunkenly she sat back on her haunches and leaned against his desk. Her mind was remarkably clear. While Eddie slept on oblivious to the kiss stolen from him, Tylan's senses expanded ecstatically. She could hear voices in the corridor outside the door and in the decks above and below her. She could see every hair on his head and the stubble on his cheeks and could have cheerfully counted them. She could taste the stale air of the ship and the salty taste of her tears. Most of all she could feel the fading heat of his lips rising off hers. She sat like that for several minutes before she noticed a change in Eddie. It was subtle, but she was trained to see these things. Eddie was sleeping dreamlessly now. His breathing had settled to a slower pace. His heart beat easier as tension flowed out of him. She hadn't allowed herself to indulge in pride for some time, but she knew she was responsible and it felt almighty good.

She felt an intense urge to curl up next to him and fall asleep as was the right of a lover. Tylan wanted to claim this man for herself in the most impatient of ways. She was about to proceed with this line of thinking when she heard the intercom chime.

She bolted for the workstation and shut it off but not before Eddie stirred. He heaved himself awake drunkenly. Blindly he groped for the controls to the intercom and found her ass instead. For some reason she didn't understand, his exhausted mind equated her bum to the intercom controls and he slapped it as if to shut it off. She let out a surprised little shriek, but Eddie only collapsed back to the deck.

"This is Gordon," he slurred without opening his eyes.

Lieutenant Emily Blackburn's voice came over the intercom. "Did I interrupt something, Commander?"

"Naaaahh," Eddie yawned, "just a nap."

"I've got an idea you should see, sir," Blackburn said.

Eddie yawned again, but he settled even further to the deck. After a long moment in which Tylan was certain he'd gone back to sleep he answered, "Can't this bloody shit wait?"

"I'm not sure, sir. It has to do with the power grid," Blackburn explained.

Eddie sighed. "Go on," he growled.

"I'm thinking the weapons will have to be rebuilt completely instead of adapted to the new core. The converters involved would be complicated and likely to fail, I might add."

"I think Tylan's the one you should be talking to, Lieutenant," Eddie mumbled. "The Captain told me last night she's cleared around the rest of the ship.

"Isn't she in your office?" Blackburn asked.

Eddie didn't appear to register what Emily said, or so Tylan thought. After a moment's pause she noticed his breathing settle down again. He'd fallen asleep while talking she guessed. Tylan wasn't sure she should let everyone know what she'd been up to, so she put on her best Vulcan dispassion, and spoke into the intercom.

"I'm here, Lieutenant," she said calmly.

"Did Commander Gordon explain the polarity change in the power grid to you?" Emily asked.

"Not yet," Tylan admitted, "What schematics should I be looking at?"

Emily rattled off a file number and Tylan opened it up on Eddie's workstation. What she saw puzzled her. "I don't understand," she said, "how do we get power in twelve phases?"

"It's the new warp core," Emily explained. "Why don't you come down here and I'll explain it to you?"

Tylan glanced down at Eddie. Her rump still tingled from his hand, and she was certain she had gone flush. The urge to do all sorts of indecent things to him was becoming rather urgent so moving out of his office might be a good idea. Also, her security codes had been revoked when she turned herself in. As luck would have it, today Eddie had fallen asleep with his code keyed into his workstation. As her Tal'Shiar training would have it, she already knew his access codes, but that was just another ugly detail she had to sort out with him and the Captain before long. Talking to Emily face to face would be preferable, but her current state of arousal was rather obvious and it made more sense to approach the problem from the schematic point of view at this stage.

She felt her ears begin to burn as she looked at Eddie, and blushed a vivid green when she noticed her breasts were swelling. It was one of the shortcomings of being a Romulan female. Romulan males had the predictable response to arousal, but Romulan women had to contend with their own version of the phenomena. It was not uncommon for Romulan women who were flat-chested as a wooden plank to sprout breasts four or five cup sizes larger than normal while aroused. Some of the finest braziers in the known galaxy were made on Romulus to accommodate the needs of Romulan women, but Tylan had never seen one. Hiding this kind of growth would be impossible. _I might as well march out there naked_, she fumed at herself. She had an instant to marvel how this had never come up before in seven years of living in close quarters with the crew before realizing how rarely she'd felt this keyed-up in all that time.

"I'll stay here for now," Tylan said struggling not to sound breathless. "If Commander Gordon has something to add, he's right here."

Emily walked her through the various schematics and the files on the new power specifications. After about ten minutes Tylan managed to focus on the problems she was listing off and was able to converse without sounding like she'd run a marathon.

"So we need twelve-phase weaponry instead of two-phase?" Tylan asked after Emily finished with her line of reasoning.

"I'm not sure we do, but I'm thinking it would be safer and more reliable if we did," Emily explained.

"Not to mention more powerful," Tylan mused thoughtfully. She considered the problem carefully for a moment before reaching a decision. "You're right. Any converters we install would overload and breach in an emergency."

"I thought so," Emily said. "I'll get started on building the weapons."

Tylan couldn't help an incredulous sneer from dropping out of her mouth. "You have twelve-phase weapons, Lieutenant?"

"Well no," Emily admitted, "but how hard could it be to rig them up?"

"Counterproductive," Tylan declared. "Tell you what, detach the phasers from the saucer and drive and put them outside the cave. I'll get started on the new stuff right away. I've got the proper specifications in my lab for this sort of thing."

It was Emily's turn to be incredulous. "You do?" she blurted.

"Starfleet tried a sixteen phase weapons platform eighty years ago. They worked out the specifications, but they never found a suitable power plant. They worked on everything down to a single phase array. The hardware will be different especially on the emitters, but the specifications will be the same," Tylan explained.

"How soon can you have a working system?" Emily asked.

"I can have prototypes ready for testing by the end of the week," Tylan admitted proudly. "A full scale model should be ready by the end of the month."

Emily was quiet for a long time before answering. "Commander, what do you think we should do?" she asked.

The entire conversation had been conducted on audio alone, so Emily was completely unaware Gordon was out cold. Tylan didn't want to wake him, but she didn't want to explain what she was doing in here either. She agonized over what to do for a heartbeat before nudging Eddie with her foot.

He didn't stir.

She slapped him a time or two before deciding he was completely shut down. Waking him up would mean enduring several minutes of confusion before he could bring his faculties to bear.

"I'm afraid he fell asleep while we're talking," Tylan admitted.

"Not surprising," Emily allowed. She heaved a great sigh of exasperation before explaining her doubts. "Our fabrication schedules are fairly rigid, Tylan. I'm not sure what we'll be doing in a month. I think we'll have the new frame finished up to deck fourteen, but the power grid shouldn't be much past deck five."

Tylan played with Eddie's files for a moment or two before finding the building schedule he'd worked out. "Says here, he expects deck seven completely finished by the end of the month," she said.

Emily wasn't convinced. "At the rate this is going, I doubt it. We're barely keeping up with the timetable as it is."

Tylan had to admit it was a big job to rebuild and refashion a ship the size of _Pioneer_, but she had faith Eddie wouldn't have worked through all this only to be wrong. "If this is the only unexpected pitfall…" she began.

Emily cut her off sharply. "That's just the thing, Tylan, it isn't!" she snapped. "Every gadget on this heap of junk that isn't broken is coming up with problems to the new warp core. We ran computer models on a few of them this morning and we concluded we'll have to develop EVERYTHING!" She shouted the last word in a rage before breaking into a full-throttle rant. "We've got to develop either a converter or a whole new computer core to accept a twelve-phase input. We have to develop a new com system for the same thing. We tested a converter on the navigation array, and it couldn't even identify where we were in the room! Every light we have aboard will explode if we put just a trickle of twelve-phase power into them. Our replicators are producing nothing but slag when we tried to test the power grid on it and that's with ordinary two-phase power! We're so close to starting from scratch, we'd be better off gathering stones, bones, and animal skins, and trying that instead!"

"Why don't you explain this to the Captain?" Tylan suggested.

"Because that's Eddie's job!" Emily screamed through the intercom. A moment later Tylan could hear the woman sobbing on the other end of the line.

Emily typically was the most unflappable person she'd hoped to meet next to Tylan herself so this was shocking change. Tylan didn't know what to make of it. Had Emily gone mad? Had the constant strain unhinged her thoughts this badly?

Upon consideration she rejected the notion. She was quite familiar with the signs of strain, and this was a breed apart. Something deeper troubled Emily than just work. Some fundamental shift in her perceptions had occurred. Why?

"Lieutenant?" she began before deciding on another approach. "Emily, why don't you see the Captain yourself? I think you have more on your mind than just work at the moment."

Emily sobbed something that sounded like an agreement and keyed off the intercom.

Tylan studied Eddie for a moment. Was he really dealing with this sort of thing all the time? Was the crew coming apart? She didn't think so. The scientists were overjoyed with Cove while everyone else was glad to set foot on a planet again even if it was a barren desert. The mood around the engineers was one of anticipation. Eddie's people were eager to get started with the host of new problems the refit posed if for no other reason than to break the routine. There was even hope they could drastically improve their lot if they could but put the ship together right the first time.

On the other hand Emily's behavior was alarming, and far more important, Eddie was completely worn out. He'd barely gotten started with the ship before collapsing after two months of constant crisis.

Tylan stooped again to Eddie's side. She ran a loving hand through his hair and fretted about his comfort. She wanted to do something for him. "Who am I kidding?" she asked herself aloud in her native language. "I want this man in the worst way this very instant!" It was the first words she'd spoken in Romulan for almost thirty years. They sounded clumsy in her mouth even if her thoughts ranted in the tongue all the time. A smile passed over her face as a mad impulse struck her. Maybe she could tell Eddie everything after all.

She laughed. "The first words of Romulan I speak in over a quarter century, and it amounts to 'I wanna' fuck!' Have I really fallen so far, Eddie, or are you just that studly?" The language was coming back to her lips slowly, but it felt wonderful to be honest with herself in front of him. "You've never made it easy for me to be a Vulcan, I might add. There are times I had to hate you with every fiber of my being not to lose control and bray out a gust of laughter." She laughed again, and that too felt wonderful. "Would you like to know what I'm going to do to you once you're mine, Edmund Gordon? I'm sure you'll like it. First, I want you to tickle me until my clothes fall off and I'm weeping with laughter. Next, I'm going to show you the joys of Vulcan acupressure. Those prudes may be stodgy, but they do know their foreplay. After that, I'm going to have my way with you until you're half dead and I'm too sore to stand." She was surprised how well this trashy talk translated into Romulan. The language was remarkably subtle and could be scandalously specific in fewer words. She laughed again when she realized she'd accidentally misstated the last part of her plan into something quite out of the question. It involved getting five other women for some rather specific acts of intimacy.

She laughed so hard at the thought of Eddie managing six Romulan women in bed, he woke up. He blinked dazedly at her, annoyed she had disturbed him and confused why she was next to him while he was sleeping. Tylan had lost control and laughed even harder at his befuddled expression. Truly it was priceless! She struggled to compose herself while he stared at her. By the time she'd calmed down to a torrent of giggles, he was sitting up and staring at her with wide, confused eyes.

"Talk to Tylan!" she giggled. She stood and slapped her bum the way he had a few minutes ago mistaking it for the intercom, and she was off howling again.

Eddie tried to piece the joke together and couldn't. Slowly it dawned on him he'd never heard her laugh before. "I like your laugh," he slurred drunkenly before slowly slumping to the deck again.

Tylan laughed harder for a minute before she began to cry. She'd waited so long to hear Eddie say something she could respond to. So he liked her laugh. She had to admit it wasn't poetry, but it was the first piece of honesty between them. It was a good start.

Before she could think about it much more the intercom chirped again. This time Eddie didn't stir. Maybe she could be useful. She answered the call.

"This is Doctor Totem. The computer core just went down in all the labs." The reptilian scientist sounded prissy and offended over the audio. That was a common misconception for Totem. He had a lisp and a precise manner of speaking that always sounded overblown no matter how informal the conversation. His species was known for their prickly nature, but Tylan wondered if it had more to do with their mannerisms than their conviction. Those who worked closely with him aboard the ship claimed he was generous and considerate despite the widely held belief he was a pompous academic.

Tylan checked the schedule and discovered the problem. "You're not getting it back for five weeks, Professor, sorry. You'll have to do with auxiliary units on the shuttles or palm PADDs until then."

"I see," Totem said with a petulant lilt. "That poses a serious problem."

"Power to the computer core is liable to be erratic over the coming weeks, sir. You'd risk losing all your data and calculations several times over until the new one is on line," she explained.

Totem was surprised. "New one?"he asked. "You don't expect me to believe you're going to redesign the entire computer core, do you?"

"I'm afraid we have little choice, sir," Tylan explained. "The new core must work on a twelve-phase power net."

"As fascinating as that sounds, I'm deeply concerned about the risk," Totem chided.

"The Captain is well aware of it I assure you, Professor."

"Allow me to make my case, Lieutenant," Totem said with surprising patience. "I'm not concerned about losing our data. I'm worried we'll have to spend several months learning how to operate the new system before we grow accustomed to it. An interim step must be appraised before the old core is discarded."

Tylan admitted to herself he was right. It was a point of fact nobody had built a twelve-phase computer before least of all one the size _Pioneer_ needed. Since she hadn't been in on the decisions that led up to any of the refit details, she could only assume Eddie had some computer specialist who had a masochistic streak. Building the core would be bad enough. Learning to operate it to its proper capacity could take years let alone months.

Before she could say anything Totem reached a conclusion. "I'll get started on that step shortly. Could the engineers be persuaded to activate the core for another three days?"

"I doubt it, sir," Tylan said. She was looking over the timetable during the next week, and the man-hours would have been brutal for a crew three times the size of this one. "I could talk to them and see what can be done," she offered.

"No need," Totem announced. "I'll test what I have against the smaller processors we have around here. We may have a little trouble scaling the process up, but far, far less than I expect from the new computer core." For some reason he sounded fussy. One might think from the lisp and the clipped chatter he raced through the man was effeminate in some strange way. He had that curious combination of culture, concern, and disdain bottled up in his voice that reminded everyone aboard of the excessively vain. "Tell those engineers I'll permit them access to the system in concise stages as we test its thresholds," he added before killing the link.

Tylan was about to wonder what Totem was up to when another call chimed in. It was Okuma this time.

"What are you doing in Gordon's office, Tylan?" Okuma scolded angrily.

Tylan decided the whole story wasn't any of Okuma's business, but there was enough of the truth to get by with. "I came here to see what I should be doing with my lab and found…" she hesitated. She had to stop herself from calling Gordon "Eddie" lest anyone grew suspicious of her feelings before she was ready. Rumor had it Okuma had taken up with Forte despite regulations, but Tylan doubted her feelings for Eddie would be understood or even tolerated. The timing was all wrong somehow. Maybe later. "…Commander Gordon asleep at his desk. I've been fielding calls for him."

"Let me talk to him," Okuma snapped.

"With all due respect, Commander, I think we should let him rest as long as possible. I'd suggest moving him to his quarters if I didn't think I might need to wake him here and there." Tylan had to stop herself from saying more. Any more detail and Okuma might become suspicious.

There was a long silence over the audio followed by the twittering of a workstation on the other end of the line. "I see you've accessed his workstation, Tylan," Okuma announced. "I'm locking you out of the command codes until Eddie wakes up. Have him call me when he does so I can reactivate them."

Tylan watched as a menu vanished off the screen. She didn't mind. Eddie's command codes included access to the ship's chronometer, manually firing the weapons from engineering, manual override of all the ship's systems, and the warp core self-destruct. The chronometer didn't need fixing so far as she knew. She wasn't interested in firing the weapons in the confines of the cavern. All the ship's systems were shut down now that the computer core was off so the manual override was worthless. And she had no desire to destroy the ship. What she had left was total access to Eddie's files. Considering what she had been doing so far, that should be more than enough to keep from disturbing him. "I'll be sure to tell the Commander when he comes around," she assured Okuma coolly. She hesitated for a moment before asking, "Should I revive him at a specific time?"

Okuma sighed. When she spoke again she sounded resigned but not angry. "I guess he's wiped out?"

"Yes," Tylan confirmed.

"What other duties do you have presently?" Okuma asked.

"I have my lab to clear out and some hardware to develop for the new weapons and targeting systems," Tylan said. "From the sound of things I might be involved with almost all the power input hardware."

"I'll reactivate your code key shortly. If you think you could pull a double shift this today, I'll see if we can get one of the other engineers to field questions for Eddie while he gets some rest," Okuma said.

"I'm doing that now," Tylan pointed out. "I can have the hardware modeled digitally as we go given about a week lead time. This would be a good place to be to get the proper heads up from the various projects."

Tylan knew Okuma didn't trust her. During her interview with Koon, Samantha appeared ready to throttle her on the spot. She reasoned the XO thought Tylan was partially to blame for all that had befallen them, and the Romulan woman couldn't really blame her. They'd come within a fraction of being exterminated on two separate occasions. Romulans were known to promote such events in Starfleet. At the same time Tylan resented the mistrust. Over the past seven years she'd grown attached to this crew even as her bond to M'rath broke down. She considered them friends, even Okuma in her snippy way. She trusted Koon in a way she found hard to describe. Not exactly the trust she placed in her boss and superior, more like the faith she held in a seer. She knew she didn't want to disappoint Koon or Okuma, that privilege she withheld for M'rath alone. She understood that the trust she'd built up over the last seven years was likely to be severely shaken for the next few months if not years. There was no avoiding it. However she didn't look forward to the daily trials ahead. It astonished her Emily and Totem had been as congenial as they had been. Both of them were tired, stressed, and fully aware of her treason during all the time they had placed such thoughtless faith in her. How could they forget all that in such a short span of time?

The answer was an unlikely one. Koon had placed his faith in her without qualm. By doing so he shifted her role in the Tal'Shiar into the realm of inconsequential details. It was hard to believe so simple an act could have such far-reaching consequences. There were layers to his style of leadership she'd scarcely imagined. She noticed everyone was focused on the problems before them rather than the potential threats around them. The crew of _Pioneer_ wasn't in the slightest bit concerned about the Hirogen because Koon had taken that off their shoulders. They weren't worried about reaching _Voyager_ because Koon was convinced they'd get there. They didn't think the task of rebuilding the ship was impossible because Koon set them to work on the problem with focus and trust. In exchange, he shouldered the worries, thought ahead, and eased their grief over the loss of their friends. He took on the big issues and doled out little problems for everyone to solve. Everyone was being pushed to the limit of their endurance, but Koon was careful not to break them. Everyone was too busy to care she'd been a Tal'Shiar agent. Now that they saw her moving about the ship and assuming her place beside them, they would accept the help and think about what they had to do rather than her.

She found herself wondering if Okuma was above that. She worked closely with the Captain after all. Did Koon clue her in to his innermost thoughts? Did he explain his reasons for allowing her to remain aboard in full detail, or did he give a flippant answer and move on to the next item of business? If Okuma was outside Koon's influence, she might take a dim view to having Tylan so intimately involved with the refitting of the ship. The Romulan woman waited in silence for half a minute. The mounting tension squeezed tears from her eyes and savagely tore at her throat for a sob. She let the tears flow freely, but pride kept her from allowing the rest of her composure to crack.

"You have a point," Okuma said at last. "I'll see what Gordon thinks when he's up, but I think he'll agree so long as you work out today. Consider this your duty assignment for the second watch. I want you working in your lab during first watch on the hardware. From what I understand we're going to need a whopping lot of it."

The tension eased in increments. It was like having several weights viciously hacked off her shoulders with blows just as hard to bear as the mass pushing down on her. As Okuma spoke, more of the weights dropped off her until her heart pounded and her breathing quickened to the point she was close to hyperventilating. Quickly she composed herself, "Thank you, sir," Tylan said calmly.

The com went dead.

Tylan felt a wave of triumph wash over her. If she played her cards right, she'd be working closer to Eddie than she ever had before. It was enough to jump for joy, but the com chirped to life again and she went back to work.

She stayed at her post for the next fourteen hours before Gordon finally woke up. She couldn't remember ever being so happy.

--

He was surprised to see her. He was even more surprised to glance at the clock and realize he's slept for almost a full day. His uniform felt grimy, and his mouth tasted like it had been rinsed out in the popskull rum his instructors showed him how to make out of plasma coolant. He had to blink steadily for a full minute before his vision cleared enough to bear the light. Still, he felt groggy yet refreshed. The frantic race of his thoughts had ordered itself into a steady progression, and his body ached in a manageable fashion. Before he'd drifted off there'd been a terrible pain behind his eyes, and every time he tried to blink had felt like grinding sand into his skull; fortunately that was gone. He felt closer to human again than he had in months.

Tylan noticed him stirring, but chattered away with someone without skipping a beat. What was she doing? Eddie heaved his aching body upright and fumbled about drunkenly until he'd regained his feet. He waited for her to end the conversation before speaking. His foggy mind didn't bother to focus on what was being said. Slowly his eyes took in the surroundings. Had he really slept all this time in his office? How long had she been here? A confused memory surfaced where he told someone to talk to Tylan. Another memory, surely a dream, had the austere little woman laughing hysterically and slapping her ass as if he should ride it.

Tylan finished the conversation and keyed off the intercom. When she turned to face him, he noticed how tired she looked. "'Ow long 'ave you been 'ere?" he asked his Cockney accent thick in his mouth.

"Since this morning," she said cheerfully.

"You let me sleep the whole time?" he was irritated with himself for not waking sooner and it reduced his voice to a menacing growl.

She wasn't impressed. "You were tired, Eddie," she said softly.

Gordon was many things, but he'd never been a "morning person" in his life. His temper was always fowl until he got some coffee and toast in his belly. Ideally he reserved a little time for reading the reports from around the ship to get his mind attuned to the tasks of the day, but he'd abandoned that habit of late. After that, he was his usual, cheerful self. Anyone within range of him for the first hour of the day was liable to get snapped at or endure sullen silences. Since he spent much of this ill-tempered time alone in his quarters, few were aware of this side to him. He growled something inarticulate at her and shuffled off down the corridor to the head. When he returned, she was chatting away with someone else.

His mind was finally getting in gear, but he missed the larger portion of the conversation. Tylan was rattling off specification numbers while the person she was talking spoke in compartment numbers. It was like listening to foreigners talking in their native language. He could catch a word here and there, but he failed to follow what was going on. He glanced at the workstation and felt alarm thrill through him. "_What are you doing?_"

Tylan jumped right out of her seat from the unexpected anger in his voice. She whirled about to face him with an expression of horror on her face. "I was telling Chief Bom about the timetable for the next shift," she said sounding unexpectedly frightened. "I was telling him about the specifications for the fabrication shop in…"

Eddie cut her off. "You don't know what we're doing from here on out!" he raged.

"I'm going by your production schedule," she protested.

Eddie jabbed a finger at the workstation. "Those aren't my specifications!"

Tylan looked puzzled. "I know. Those were incomplete."

"I NEVER HAD A CHANCE TO FINISH THEM!" he shouted.

Tylan's mystified expression deepened. "Finish them?" she asked.

He stared at her dumbfounded. "Don't tell me there is a list of specifications compiled for twelve-phase power grids! I know for a fact…"

Tylan interrupted him quietly. "Yes there is."

His mind skipped a beat. "What?"

Her voice trembled nervously when she spoke, and she shook with fear as she tried to explain. "T-the specifications were standardized e-eighty years ago," she stammered.

"I've never heard of them," Eddie growled.

Tylan moved back to the workstation and brought up the appropriate files. "You were on the right track," she said quietly. "But I saw no need to reinvent all this."

Eddie stared at one file after another with a mounting anger. Not at Tylan, but with himself. He'd assumed there were no guidelines for the new power grid right from the start so he hadn't thought to research the matter. Instead he'd thrown himself into thinking through the whole mess from scratch. It had occupied every spare minute of his time for the last three weeks. He estimated he had wasted over sixty hours for this mistake. Sixty hours he could scarce afford. Sixty hours he could have used to sleep, work, or think through the tasks ahead of him. He slammed his fist through the workstation in a rage cutting off the com with a loud squawk. Why hadn't he done his homework? Why had he skipped this first step to confirm his suspicions? He knew the reasons why. He'd always hated research.

Gordon had endured his four years at the Academy knowing that the academia would lessen once he was out in the fleet. During his specialist training on Jupiter Station, he'd been told by his instructors there were two kinds of engineers: wrench-turners and golfers. Golfers were deskbound, work-a-day designers who produced specifications, prints, timetables, and theoretical applications. Wrench-turners produced working ships, safer crews, and stained uniforms that a team of trained professionals couldn't wash clean again. It was the age-old argument between the people who designed things, and those who went out and built them. The difference between an architect and an artisan. While each was just as necessary to produce a finished structure, they inhabited stratified casts where ego and creativity were often at odds.

Eddie was a wrench-turner. He demurred from paperwork, and kept his engineers organized "by ear" as he called it. Since there were few specialists in the crew it worked out rather well, but it all hinged on his memory. Since he had a marvelous ability to recall what he'd told a person down through the years, he'd rarely hit a snag. This was outside his experience.

On the surface refitting the ship to a new specification wasn't all that hard. The actual work aside, the elements in play were not terribly complicated. He was building a ship out of the remains of a ship that was falling apart. He had the power and the resources to produce what the hull of _Pioneer_ couldn't provide. Take out the time factor, and the process was fairly straightforward. The trick was not to become overwhelmed by the scale of the enterprise.

What he'd missed was the plethora of details he had to sit down and refine. His inclination was to find out how to build the new power grid as he went along. If he did it in this manner, he could sort through the quirks of the design as he encountered them. The trouble with that approach was it weighed heavily on his efforts to keep things straight. In an effort to ease the burden on himself, he'd began compiling lists of specifications for the new grid never suspecting all that had been worked out already.

In frustration he pulled at his hair and paced the room. Tylan watched him anxiously from her seat. "Oh, GOD!" he moaned into his hands in anguish. If he had only thought to look it up! He could have cost the ship months of painstaking trial and error if not fatally so. How could he have been so thoughtless? Koon's trust was going to be shaken to the bone once he found out! More than anything that injured Eddie. He could live with his mistakes, but he desperately wanted to avoid disappointing Peyter Koon. What else had he overlooked? Details flooded into his mind with almost physical force.

He leaned against the bulkhead weeping into his hands. A cold knot of fear twisted in his belly as the full scale of the task ahead broke through his last reserves of self-confidence. He curled into a ball on the deck and cried like the lonely boy from a broken home he was.

"Eddie?" Tylan asked softly.

He couldn't answer her. It was humiliating enough he was coming apart in front of her as it was. He waved her away.

A hand touched the top of his head. He flinched away from it. "Eddie?" she asked again. The hand returned and gently raked through his hair. An arm slipped around him. "It's alright," she soothed nervously. She sounded like a girl trying to talk a lion into sparing her life. "It's alright." She began murmuring words in a language he'd never heard. He didn't understand what she was saying, but the more she spoke the more he calmed down. "Te' hey lyle morisath ish nan bluv. Korri korri, Eddie, chen co mish. Korri korri, Eddie. Shhh, te' que xe korri korri, Eddie."

She kept this up for several minutes. Her voice steadily lost the note of fear and gained a note of tenderness. The despair in his heart gradually drained away. It was replaced with a new anxiety. "Are you going to tell the Captain about this?"

Tylan nodded. "I think he'll be pleased how the specifications I had on file will accelerate the work."

Eddie shook his head. "I was talking about this," he motioned to his puffy eyes and tear-streaked cheeks.

She smiled. It was the first time he'd seen it and it was dazzling. "No," she said softly before adding in Romulan, "Auvun plo gesh yan xethem que korri korri, Eddie."

He smiled, "I think that means I'm in trouble."

"Maybe," Tylan teased.

He rose to his feet, and she stepped aside to let him pass by her. He stared at her for a moment before slipping his arms around her. "I'm sorry, love," he said. "I'm not on my best behavior when I wake up."

He felt her arms tighten about him, but he missed the exultant smile.


	8. New LIfe

Commander King was glad Semmes was asleep

Chapter 8: New Life

Commander King was glad Semmes was asleep. The crew could relax when the threat of her wrath abated. They could talk, laugh, and slouch at their stations. Commander Dar'Moth could tell his lurid jokes that made the female officers blush and the male crewmen bend double with laughter. Donny Green could use the main viewer to display to marvelous constellations they were passing. Murdock and Humbolt could chat about their latest conquests among the female members of the crew. Moreover, Timothy King could talk shop with everybody.

It was refreshing to see the crew, _his crew_, as the people they really were. Semmes ruled over them by fear and an iron will, and that eroded their ability to express themselves, even in private. However, Tim King loved to see this side of the _Diocletian_. He'd come from a small town in British Columbia, and by an ironic twist, it was about the same size as the crew complement of a _Caesar_-class Dreadnought. Officially, the mission and the ship bonded everyone to the Captain, but King knew of undercurrents that added far more texture, not to mention strength, to the camaraderie aboard. Semmes may have seen the crew as the cogs that extended her will throughout the ship and beyond, but he saw them as his community.

They were good people in general. There were the occasional bad influences about the various departments, but there was much to be said about the bonding power of brilliant minds focused on common goals. The _Diocletian,_ along with her sister ships, had been staffed with the cream of Section-31's crop of personnel. The reasoning went that a fleet filled with the best minds would be the best fleet. Experience aboard the _USS Constantine_ had proven that theory flawed when her Captain executed several members of his crew after a mutiny. The _Constantine_ was still with the Section-31 fleet, but only under threat of summary, not to say brutal, discipline. Rumor had it flogging had been revived to keep the crew in line. By stark contrast, the _Diocletian _ran almost like a school outing or a college campus. Everyone focused on several, mutually dependant goals, and the excitement was hard to quell. The crew was delighted with the mission even if it was the Devil's work. King had a great deal to do with this shift in their thinking. He was good at encouraging their efforts and praising their successes. He loved to hear brilliant minds discussing, or even arguing, about the varied topics about the ship. Given that most of the crew had post-graduate degrees in one field or another, there was no shortage of subject matter for debate or strong opinions to express. It made for lively discussions over almost every table on the ship.

Except one.

Angela Semmes was not interested in debate or opinion. She did not want discussion or a fresh perspective. The flourishing community of intellectuals under her command was anathema to her, and she cared less about the concerns of the crew. She considered all the educated conversation pointless. The eggheads under her command would babble until they were buried before reaching a decision, and she wanted action from them. She was respected for her ability to settle arguments between her departments, but she was feared for her ever having to intercede at all. If she did put her foot down, she took away the pride of everyone involved along the way. She was so notorious for shattering individual resolve, that the ship's Councilor had dubbed it the "Semmes' Effect" after seeing more than eighty crewmen in a row with identical nervous breakdowns.

Her abrasive personality aside, she was precisely what the _Diocletian _needed her to be: tough, decisive, and focused. Her function was to make decisions, and she could supply those on demand without hesitation.

King saw himself on the other side of the equation. If Semmes monopolized the decisions, he provided the options and opportunities. The Captain harvested what he grew from the minds of the crew. He nurtured their faculties and teased their best efforts out of them, while Semmes only sat back to pick-and-choose. He found the work fulfilling. In _his_ crew, he could find whatever he needed. More often than not, he found more than he needed. He kept their morale high, but he did not always find it easy.

Donny Green waved him over to his station not long before King was about to retire for the night. "We have a problem, sir," he said darkly. "A dozen or so warp trails appeared over the one we're following."

King noted Green had not labeled the trail as _Pioneer_'s. "How does that affect tracking them?" he asked.

Green made an exasperated face before turning back to the display. "They could've launched their shuttles," he explained. "Their warp signature was never easy to pick out."

"How so?"

"Their warp drives distorted subspace into a morass once they went past warp 3. The Starfleet Bureau of Design and Testing fixed the problem by deliberately adding a flutter in the wake of these things. Subspace out there is so churned up I can't pick out our wake behind us." Green waved airily towards the stern of the ship with a disgusted scowl. "If it had been one or two shuttles, we'd have done alright, but the trail is so wide, they must've launched at least half their compliment."

"An evacuation?" King wondered aloud.

Green twisted his face up into a scowl. "That'd be an option," he admitted.

"Or they could be evacuating the wounded to a friendly system," Lieutenant Bo Lien said.

King and Green turned to the tactical officer. If Semmes had been on the bridge, she would have bawled Lien out for eavesdropping, but King appreciated input unsolicited or otherwise. "What friendly system?" King asked with a hefty note of skepticism.

"Along this flight path?" Green added.

"It makes operational sense," Lien pointed out. "Between the Flare and the Hirogen, they took quite a drubbing. Maybe they found a sympathetic world nearby."

Lieutenant Commander Dar'Moth rapped his knuckles thoughtfully against his station. It was a polite, Cardassian gesture to intrude on a discussion, but it was also a nervous tick of Dar'Moth's. While others scratched their heads, wrung their hands, or fidgeted in place, the Cardassian navigator was constantly rapping, tapping, and thrumming his fingers any surface in reach. Semmes spent two weeks screaming at the man before she broke him of the habit in her presence. "There's not much out here," he said when he was satisfied he had their attention. "The Hirogen dominate the sector, and I doubt they would help."

"Gnan could have lured them into a trap early," King suggested.

"Yeah, he wasn't a bit happy with the Captain's plan," Green agreed. "He could be making a quick play to cut us out of the kill."

Dar'Moth and Lien shook their heads in unison. "Too far away," Lien said.

"And in the wrong direction," Dar'Moth added.

"On a psychological level it works, but it falls apart given the current timetable," Lien expanded. "The Captain dared Gnan to catch _Pioneer_. That might have angered him enough to move off on his own, but he's at least half a sector away."

"Well he didn't call ahead to trap them," Green said. "I've been tapped into the Hirogen net for a week, and they're not talking about Gnan or _Pioneer_."

"Let me see a navigation display up on the main viewer," King ordered.

Dar'Moth tapped a few keys and the screen changed. The _Diocletian_ was about a day's flight time from the point where all the subspace distortions Green was so worried about started.

"They made a high speed run at about warp 8 up to here," Green said and put a target blip along the flight path not far from where the trail ended. "They slowed to warp 1 before the trail gets broken up."

"Any signs of subspace buckling?" Lien asked. "They could be trying to tow the ship with the shuttles."

Green glanced back at his readings before shaking his head. "I wish there was. I could track that."

"What lies ahead of them?" King asked.

Dar'Moth projected the flight path straight ahead of the cutoff point. Twenty stars intersected the line before the line stopped. "At warp 1, this is as far as they could have gotten. If I expand the flight path to a spherical projection…" he tapped another key, and a wide field bloomed on the viewer to include another score of stars. "According to the Hirogen net, nothing inside that radius is habitable."

"Could they deliberately be trying to obscure their trail?" Lien asked rhetorically.

"I'm not sure this would deter Hirogen trackers," Green replied. "Their scanners are more effective than ours."

"Surly they would be talking about it over the net," Dar'Moth pointed out.

"They're not talking at all," Lien explained. "The Captain's call to Gnan shut them all up."

"They're waiting for her to call again," King said thoughtfully. "The others must be eavesdropping in the hopes of cashing in on the kill." He paced the deck around the bridge before coming to a stop in front of the main viewer. "We may have stirred the pot a little ahead of schedule." If the Hirogen were silent, they were waiting to strike, he reasoned. King knew the hunters had several, quite impressive, ways of concealing themselves. Part of the reason for sending the Section 31 fleet out this way instead of moving directly to the Gamma Quadrant was to learn, and perchance enlist, the techniques Hirogen used in combat. The effectiveness of Jem'Hadar in close combat warranted keeping them at a tactical distance. The Hirogen knack for gaining a devastating first strike against prey could expand the tactical options they could use against the Dominion when they arrived. He had no idea how Koon survived his first encounter with the Hirogen, but he doubted it had anything to do with skill. He had tried broaching the topic with Semmes, but she did not want to fritter her time away speculating how, "That damned Yakut avoided his appointment with the taxidermist," she scoffed before moving onto the next item of the day's agenda.

"Damned Yakut" or not, Peyter Koon was tenaciously refusing to die. Peyter had a lucky streak a light year wide, and he played a smart game indeed, if he was aware the _Diocletian_ was tracking him. Obscuring his trail could be an accidental byproduct of other operations, but King strongly doubted it. Koon had survived the trip out here by making his way through the most convoluted string of cosmic pitfalls Section 31 could make him run through. Timothy King's professional appraisal of that strategy was not favorable in hindsight. For the past six years, Section 31 had taught Koon's crew how to handle every serious operational emergency by the most effective method devised: harsh experience. His people were alert, seasoned, and hone to the razor's edge of readiness long before the Flare all but demolished _Pioneer_. King had scanned the damage report Koon had filed back to Forrestal personally, and was duly shocked any ship, let alone a lousy _Nebula_-class vessel, could survive and shelter the frail bodies inside her. Had any other crew encountered such a disaster, King doubted they could have put their ship back together. Koon's crew, thanks to Semmes' efforts to kill them, was easily the most experienced with repairing their ship on the fly of any in Starfleet.

"How long has it been since Peyter reported to Forrestal?" King asked.

Lien shook his head, "Nothing since he broke the Flare down."

Dar'Moth rapped his knuckles thoughtfully on his console. "Do you suppose he's grown suspicious of us?"

"It's not out of the realm of possibility," King mused. He paced from one side of the main viewer to the other peering thoughtfully at the potential havens Koon might seek out. Koon had to be aware of the Hirogen threat. He could be covering his tracks to counter the threat they posed. If Peyter had become wily enough to suspect the _Diocletian_ and her sisters hovering out of sight, Semmes would have the authority to force the issue of direct involvement with Forrestal. While that option was attractive, King knew Semmes would insist upon rock-solid evidence she could clobber the old Admiral with. She would also demand to know where "that damned Yakut" was so she might obtain permission and a kill within the same breath. Forrestal reserved the right to countermand his orders at any time, so it was essential to move quickly if he yielded to the obvious solution he had avoided for years. Possible exposure to Federation oversight would be just the tool to bend the intractable John Clay Forrestal into line.

"Activate the cloak again," King ordered. "Recall the probes. We'll assume they're heading somewhere along their current flight path." He turned back to the others and airily waved at the main viewer indicating he was done with it. Dar'Moth returned the display to the forward view. When Semmes woke up, King would suggest alerting the Hirogen to the search area. After all, hunting was what Hirogen were best at.

--

Ten decks below King, Lieutenant Commander Victoria Collins anxiously awaited a visitor. She held a PADD before her eyes and struggled to read it, but her mind refused to focus on the novel before her. She read the same sentence for half an hour before giving up and setting the story aside. She doffed her clothes and spread out her Yoga mat on the deck. She went through the first round of breathing and stretching before her eyes inevitably settled on the mirror across the room. She was a vain woman and had always traveled with a fine, full-length mirror to admire her beauty. She was justified in her appreciation. Her immodest appraisal of her looks only slightly inflated the bonds of reality. Her ebony skin was smooth and fine as that of a newborn. Her fine features, a gift from her Thai great-grandmother, framed a set of large brown eyes she used to snare men under her spell. Another gift from her Asian heritage was a black drift of fine hair she wore to her waist. Even in the dim light of her quarters, the silvery luster of her hair framed her head like a crown. Her athletic frame had lured a fair share of lovers to her bed. Most of them delighted, no _rejoiced,_ in her arms. The heft of her breasts fascinated them, the strength of her long legs buoyed them, the curve of her back and buttocks drew them, and her full lips would part to let loose brays and screams of ecstasy for them. She was a Nubian Queen the Pharaohs would have drained the Nile to possess. She was what any man could want, _more_ than any man could want. Her current lover, and presently tardy visitor, agreed with her self-image, and professed he loved her to the depths of his soul. For a woman accustomed to flattery, this sort of admission was par for the course. Any man, who treated her with nothing short of idolatrous worship, she summarily dismissed from her favors. She was blessed with a body she cared for, looks she prized, and a brilliant mind she exercised to the full limit every day. Anyone who did not appreciate the magnitude of her presence was foolish beyond even her ability to describe.

Brilliant and beautiful as she was, Lieutenant Commander Collins was frantically preoccupied at the moment. She tried to move through the second round of stretches in her mantra, but lost her balance when she glanced at the mirror again. Perched high on the balls of her feet, with her arms reaching to the ceiling; she caught a glimpse of her profile and recoiled in horror. Her formerly smooth and flat belly had begun to distend from the cradle of her hips. She had to turn her back on the mirror to regain her footing. Every time she saw the slight swelling of her abdomen, her knees refused to bear her weight and she would clatter in a lovely heap on the deck. Facing towards the door that stubbornly refused to produce her visitor; she slipped her hands down to feel the tender flesh just above her hips. Her probing fingers encountered an unyielding knot beneath the skin. It was mildly painful to disturb it. Furthermore, a brush past her large, brown nipples, formerly a favorite sensation, resulted in an irritating shriek of nerve endings.

_This can't be happening!_ She tried to roll up her mat, but her hands shook so badly she could not roll it tightly enough to slip it back inside its storage tube. _I was careful, dammit!_ She raged inwardly. Over the years, she'd had her share of scares. Never a terribly regular girl, she dismissed the first and second month with barely a thought. _Four_ months was another matter, and now she was showing. _I can't have a baby! I don't want a baby!_

Victoria closed her eyes and kneeled before the mirror again. She tried to imagine herself perfect and seductive; the courtesan of a powerful king in all her glory. Such a woman could not be bothered with children. Such a woman lost her power over men the instant the threshold of motherhood was crossed. She opened her eyes and allowed them to drift, no _dart_, to the triangle of her hips and thighs. It was harder to pick out from this angle, but for a woman accustomed to every nuance of her appearance, she could make out the slight bulge beneath her belly button. Tears rolled down her face and splashed on her breasts. Later she would find a glimmer of pride in the fact she did not cradle her face in her cupped hands. Instead, she stared at her belly and wept. At least she had been able to face the truth.

An hour later, a discreet knock on the door announced the arrival of her tardy guest. Not bothering to put a stitch of clothing on, she strode to the door and stood before it as it slid open. Ensign John "Muddy" Murdock gaped at her with surprise and lust. "What's the occasion?" he asked when he managed to regain his breath. He stepped into the room and closed the door behind him without taking his eyes off her. Victoria peeled his clothes off and led him to the bed before he could understand what was happening.

What she did next was the worst lay she'd had in years, and she only had herself to blame. She rushed through the seduction, tried to force her arousal, and wound up hurting herself several times before he was satisfied she wasn't going to enjoy herself. She tried every twisted trick she could think of, but her mind would not let go of her anxiety. Muddy was the father, she had no doubt, and now she was loosing her power over him. She hated him for it. She hated him for doing this to her. She hated herself for attaching herself to this young, selfish boy in the first place. She slithered out from under him and made her way to the bathroom. Muddy followed her. She glared him outside the bathroom before closing the door for some privacy. She stepped into the shower. She wanted to clean the smell of him off her and out of her before she faced him again.

"What's the matter, Vicki?" he asked through the door. She _hated_ him for it. "I'm sorry I was late, but we lost _Pioneer_'s trail right before my shift ended. Commander King had us all…"

"WILL YOU FUCKING SHUT UP!" she shouted through the door. She heard a thump on the other side, and realized with a self-satisfied smirk Muddy had taken a step back from the door in shock.

For a long time she stood in the sonic shower waiting for Muddy to recover from her outburst. Forty minutes later, she stepped out. She did not feel clean, but she guessed he had picked up his things and left.

She was mistaken.

Muddy sat on the deck just outside the bathroom. His hangdog expression melted into an angry one when he saw her. "About goddamn time," he said before bolting into the bathroom for a long, leisurely piss. When he emerged, he glared angrily at her as she started to gather up his things. "I'm staying here tonight," he snapped.

"These are my quarters, Ensign. You'll leave when I tell you to," Victoria announced. She wadded his clothes into a bundle and proffered them to him.

Muddy swatted the bundle of clothes out of her hands, and spun her about to face him. "I'm not leaving," he said calmly.

"You're being insubordinate and…"

He cut her off by kissing her hard on the mouth. Even in her enraged state, she melted into it. Muddy Murdock was an _excellent_ kisser.

When he pulled away, his eyes were tender again. "How can I make us better?" he asked softly.

She tried to find an easy way to say it, but the truth was too big to sugar coat. "I'm pregnant," she blurted.

Muddy's reaction shocked her. His eyes went wide for a heartbeat before he wrapped his arms around her and joyfully lifted her off the floor. He swung her around in a circle knocking everything off her desk in a clatter. He sat her back down and kissed her again. An instant later, he was gathering her off the floor as her legs melted from under her. His lips rained down on her brow, her eyes, her neck, her ears, and back to her breathless lips again. His arms cradled her to him as if she were no heavier than a toy doll. "This is _wonderful_!" he exulted again and again.

Completely caught off guard, Victoria endured this with a kind of boneless shock that was only a heartbeat away from a dead faint.

"Oh, my darling love!" he laughed, "I never hoped you could give me more than you already have. Now there will be so many more reasons to…"

"I don't want a baby!" Victoria interrupted.

Muddy barely noticed. "But our baby will be another part of you to love," he pointed out cheerfully.

Victoria stared at the man/boy who had sired her first pregnancy with disbelieving eyes. "You don't mean that," she said before sliding out of his arms. "You're too young to understand what I'm going through."

He shook his head. "Why are you frightened?" he asked. He sounded baffled.

"Because I'm not supposed to be a mother!" she barked.

"What's wrong with being a mother?"

She couldn't believe he was being so dense. "Mothers are powerless fixtures around the homes of small men," she snapped.

Muddy shook his head again. "You'll never be powerless, and you're too driven to be a homebody."

"Mothers are shrews," she pointed out.

"Only when they feel neglected," he said tenderly.

"I'm too young!" she wailed.

"You're thirty-one," he chided. "I'm twenty-two, in case you've forgotten."

"But I'll never be free again!" She broke down into tears again. He embraced her tenderly this time, and gently carried her to the bed. She cried against him while he stroked her hair.

After a long time, he spoke softly in her ear. "Victoria… do you think it'll be a girl?"

She'd been so upset by the notion of a baby; she had never considered the question. "I… what? Why?" she stammered.

"I want to name her Treasure if it's a girl." He tipped her face up to meet his eyes. "She'll be what you are to me, so I want to tell her so every day."

"Treasure?" she was dazed by the idea.

"If it's a girl," he said wistfully. "What do you want to call it if it's a boy?"

"A son?" Victoria had never considered having a son before. "I… I… could have a son?"

"Last time I checked those are the only two flavors they come in," Muddy chuckled.

She wanted to laugh, but the sound was so shaky coming out of her throat it sounded like a moan.

"Or it could be a daughter," Muddy said with a tender brush past her lips. "I'd like to have another version of you around to spoil rotten."

This time she did laugh.

"So what if it's a son?" he asked.

"I don't know," she admitted, "I've never thought about it before."

The rest of the night passed in a daze, but not the kind she was accustomed to. They talked and laughed. They planned for the future. Muddy carefully avoided mentioning something they were going to have to face sooner or later. There was every chance they would not be allowed to keep the baby. Captain Semmes despised children and had overseen five abortions already. To her line of reasoning _USS Diocletian_ was a warship and children did not belong here. The crew was not even supposed to fraternize let alone copulate and reproduce.

Victoria knew something Muddy did not. She was a doctor; consequently, she had access to information about the rest of the crew. Non-fraternization rules or not, one of the five abortions had been for Angel Semmes. Not long after they had reached the 3KPC arm, Semmes had kindled with the former chief navigator. Determined to keep her secret quiet, she had banished the man to the astronomy department. Unlike the industrious astronomer aboard _Pioneer_, Semmes' former lover had wallowed in obscurity until he'd quietly hung himself a few months later in his quarters. He'd been so determined to shed light on the circumstances of his death; he'd burned his last words into his chest using a dental laser detailing the circumstances of his demise. Only Semmes and Victoria had seen the words before the Captain ordered the body of her former lover destroyed.

The shapely Captain had a failing for a few more of the crew she was anxious to hide. Semmes had even come in for a case of venereal disease Victoria had linked to, of all people, another woman. Not that Victoria had any particular opinion on Semmes' bisexuality (she knew of at least three confirmed homosexual couples on the ship) but the Captain would loathe such information becoming common knowledge. She could only hope Angela Semmes might allow Victoria to keep her child in exchange for keeping a few things private.

Muddy did not appear to care. He talked on and on about what a good mother she was going to be, how hard he was going to try to be the best father ever, and how much he loved her. He treated her with a deference she had never experienced before. He did not quite carry her about on a pillow, but had she asked, she had few doubts he would. Never in all the years and all her lovers had she made anyone so fundamentally happy. It inspired awe in her she never imagined. She'd always supposed the threshold of motherhood to be a dreary frontier not unlike being cast out of Paradise for Adam and Eve. However Muddy's reaction caught her completely off guard. The joy he expressed was unsolicited and infectious. Suddenly they had an entire constellation of new things to discuss that were… well… fun to think about. It was almost like playing with her dolls when she was a child only now she had a man before her gleefully going along with it.

When they finally nodded off late that night, they both slept fitfully. Muddy kept waking up and cuddling closer to her. Victoria kept having nightmares and waking up in a cold sweat. For better or worse, she decided she wanted the baby if for no other reason than to satisfy her own curiosity. What if she had a son? Would she be proud of him? Would he love her? And most important, how could she preserve this life from the wrath of Captain Semmes?

--

Aboard _Pioneer_ a similar scene was playing out.

"Who's the father?" Koon asked the shame-faced young woman across from him.

Emily Blackburn cradled her belly in her arms and stared at the deck. She'd cried herself senseless before arriving so she wouldn't break down in front of her Captain. So far it was working. "Commander Garrett," she admitted dully. "We were seeing each other for about…"

Koon waved a hand. "That doesn't matter now," he interrupted with a laugh. "It only takes a moment to set this sort of thing in motion."

Emily felt a twist of anxiety in her chest. "What do you want me to do?"

"Well," Koon drawled in his thickest Russian accent, "In another time and place I'd insist you visit a church and pray for the soul of your child. In yet another time and place I'd rant patriotic slogans at you. However we're in the middle of reinventing ourselves so it is a time of much educated guess and crystal ball."

Koon tapped a control on his desk and a schematic of the new ship appeared. "Lucky for you I thought of incorporating a nursery into the new deck plan," he said and pointed out the compartment to her on the screen.

Emily hadn't expected this. "You're not upset?"

"Not at all," Koon chuckled. "I will insist on a few things though."

Dread surfaced in her heart. "Such as?"

"You must go to Doctor Fahdlan and obey his instructions regarding your condition. Once we find out everything's alright, I insist we announce this to the whole crew," Koon said with a widening smile.

Emily was relived. Her primary concern was that Captain Koon would insist on secrecy. He had the authority to have the fetus transferred into cryogenic storage until he felt the time suitable to bring the child to term, but it hadn't appeared to have crossed his mind. Given the frazzled state of the crew and the dilapidated condition of _Pioneer_ he had every motive to keep this from his people in an effort to shield them from yet another concern. She pointed this out to him before she could stop herself.

Koon shook his head. She noticed streaks of white peppering his black hair. His unshaven stubble from a full day on duty, looked like a coating a sugar across his jaw and under his nose. Had it all gone white since the Flare? "This is good news, Emily," he chided gently.

"I'm not sure I agree under the circumstances, Captain," she said.

He held up a hand to placate her. "Children are a good thing. Are we in agreement, Emily?"

"But the ship is in a shambles! This is hardly the time to have brats crawling all over the ship," she pointed out.

Koon turned thoughtful. After a long silence he asked, "Are you afraid, Emily?"

She opened her mouth to object only to shut it again with a click. She was afraid of being a single mother. "This baby means the end of my life as I know it," she admitted.

"True," Koon agreed with a nod. "But that doesn't mean it's a bad thing."

"But I'm alone. Joshua is gone," she said.

"This ship is too small to allow that to happen," Koon assured her. "I'll wager you'll have more help than you can use before long."

Hope slowly reached into her and eased her worries. "You really think so?"

"I can't be sure of it from the crew, but speaking for myself I'd love to help out," Koon admitted. "It's been a long time since I've held a baby. My daughters are in their twenties right now." He chuckled, "God, I'm getting old! My baby is… what..?" he calculated for a heartbeat, "Twenty-one?"

The thought of Captain Peyter Koon strolling about the ship with a baby cradled in his arm was so preposterous she laughed.

Koon smiled again. "You don't have to agree with me, Emily."

"It's just the image of you wandering about the ship with a baby is so ridiculous," Emily giggled.

"I've done it before. My little Natalya had the entire _USS Caspian Sea_ wrapped around her finger when I took her on a tour of her poppa's ship. I still claim she got me promoted to first officer because Captain Jared wanted to see more of my darling girl."

Emily laughed. "Will my baby get me promoted?"

Koon shrugged, "Maybe," he said with a laugh.

They talked for another hour about his kids and babies in general. It was a subject he warmed to with surprising cheer. During all the years she'd known him, Koon had not been one to speak of his family at all. It was a wonderful shock to know he was a loving, if largely absent, father. He told her how his wife and he had alternated fleet assignments to raise them. One year his wife would stay on Earth and take a headquarters post while he went on a cruise. The next year they'd alternate the arrangement. In this way, his Natalya and Anna had known both their parents despite their long absences. When the mission to the Core came along, Peyter took the job only because he didn't trust another Captain to get it right. At the same time his wife took command of _USS Endeavor_ and a mission to visit the Galactic Halo. Natalya and Anna had been left with their grandparents, and it worried Koon to no end. He hadn't liked leaving them behind, but taking them along on a crowded ship for several years was just asking for trouble down the road. In retrospect he wished he'd brought them anyway.

The talk of his family changed the man Emily knew so well as her Captain. His eyes twinkled when he recalled his elder daughter Anna riding a horse for the first time. He laughed unreservedly when he remembered his little Natalya crawling into bed with his wife and himself during a rather intimate moment. He grew dreamy when he described how beautiful his wife was with his girls. Emily could see shadows of how he regarded everyone aboard _Pioneer_ in the pride he felt for his family. Upon consideration, it was a good place to be. If Koon felt even a fraction of the devotion he had for his family back on Earth, his crew was in good hands.

Koon let her leave about two hours later, albeit reluctantly. There were things to do while the new life slowly grew inside Emily. He wondered after she left how many more of the women aboard would wind up in a family way in the coming weeks, months, and years.

Truly it cheered his heart to hear the news. Children had a way of making good people into better ones, and he had an entire crew full of good people.

On the other hand, it did mean some of his good people were doing some rather naughty things in their spare time. That was only natural, but he wondered if it was already out of hand. He knew of a few couples aboard, but the news of Emily and Joshua had blindsided him. If everyone wasn't careful, things could get ugly before anyone had a clue what was happening. Emily's announcement to the crew should yield some good results in that regard he hoped forlornly.

After a long time, Peyter allowed himself to wonder about his family. In an odd way he felt a sense of loss when he considered them. What did that mean? His ingrained Russian superstition had lists of grim answers to choose from that he didn't want to consider. After seven years of lukewarm correspondence, his wife and daughters could have moved on without him.

--

"Why is the cloak back on?" Semmes snapped the next morning.

King explained his reasons but he knew she wasn't listening.

Angela Semmes didn't like being out of the decision process. It was her habit to micromanage to an excruciating degree. She'd designed the command structure like a pyramid with her at the apex, but that didn't mean she lent much trust in those she delegated tasks to. She wasn't a scientist or an engineer, but she was a skilled administrator in the day-to-day workings of the ship. She tended to think in terms of resources whenever a command question came up. The most coveted resource aboard the _Diocletian_ was manpower.

Even though the dreadnought had an enormous crew by the standards of the regular fleet, the _Diocletian_ was a labor intensive. 700 man-hours were required _each shift _to maintain the heavy weapons alone. The cloaking device worked almost without consideration, but the havoc it caused with the warp drive kept her engineers buzzing about the ship tending to varied disasters. A full quarter of her effective labor on any given day was consumed with maintaining the ship immaterial of what the ship was doing. Accidents, infrequent as they might be, could consume up to a week of the whole crew's efforts. Then there were several projects Section 31 wanted Semmes to prosecute by nature of her unique geographic position.

Section 31 had an extensive, if shady, scientific department called "The Basement" by most of Section 31 as a term of endearment. This belied how deeply it was resented by the people who had to obey its directives. Overseen by warring commands within Section 31, The Basement delighted in making life beyond the safe confines of their laboratories difficult. Semmes dreaded messages out of the Basement since they were tailor-made to aggravate everyone who saw them from her on down. During her long pursuit of _Pioneer_, she'd sent some of the Basement's more tedious chores to Koon's people to erode the morale of his crew. It worked until the Basement discovered her duplicity and started sending stuff for _Pioneer_ as well. The real problem with the Basement and its experiments was how badly it drained her man-hours every time they sent something. On five occasions she'd been forced to devote several hours of the _Diocletian_'s full computer core power to the Basement; wrecking anything she hoped to accomplish in the same timeframe. Under normal circumstances, it kept her scientists working around the clock delegating projects she needed done into their spare time.

Then there was the command crew. Organizing 2,500 humans and aliens into an effective crew wasn't easy given the wide variety of different species and skills aboard. She had fifty species and sixteen required specific diets, causing a drain on her resources to store away the data required to replicate it all. Also she had twenty-five doctors aboard to tend to the specific anatomies in detail. Each doctor was qualified to be CMO in their own right and egos were constantly flaring in the five sick bays around the ship. It didn't help Semmes had appointed a self-important Lieutenant Commander named Victoria Collins to the job. Collins was brilliant, vain, and uncaring of the feelings she stepped on. The doctors under her resented her status and made frequent calls to Semmes to mediate disputes. It didn't help one bit Semmes didn't trust Collins and despised the whiny egos that came knocking at her door with grievances.

A more diplomatic Captain, such as Koon, might have solved the problem with the doctors by firing Collins or delegating the chore to another officer. Instead Semmes tackled her misbehaving doctors with crushing discipline for five years until the problems mysteriously vanished.

Unbeknownst to Semmes, King had stepped in to add a measure of tact to the escalating crisis. He solved the problem in a remarkably short time. Before he'd taken charge, each of the sick bays specialized to accept only a few of the species aboard, King divided up the specialists and turned the sick bays into a general admission status. He'd noted most of the conflicts arose from doctors arguing over how to treat patients. Since more than one doctor in a specialized sick bay could diagnose an ailment, they took to arguing over whom had the final say in treatment. By spreading them around, he'd more or less made each of the specialized doctors into their own authority inside their various sick bays. Since the reshuffling was almost cosmetic in nature, Semmes hadn't noticed the change yet; however, she hadn't complained either.

It was one of the many ways King made the _Diocletian_ work for Semmes, and she resented him for the things she was aware of. She took out her frustrations on him at every opportunity. She could make hard decisions with barely a skip in her stride, but they always seemed to come back to haunt her. Much of what King did sorted itself out after a little applied effort never to rear its head again. She hated that she couldn't manage the same thing herself with one brisk command. It never occurred to her King didn't solve problems that way.

"Activating the Cloak is my decision!" Semmes snapped.

"I realize that, sir," King said patiently, "but if you'll agree with me, the tactical situation is getting dangerous."

"More dangerous now that you've cut my sensor coverage in half," Semmes argued. "Consult me next time before any major shift in the operation of the ship is enacted."

King didn't groan or roll his eyes, but it didn't mean that he wasn't sorely tempted to do both. He hadn't disturbed Semmes because she wasn't alone last night. King knew who the crewman was this time, but that would change sooner or later. Semmes tired of her playthings easily. He'd disturbed her only once while she was occupied with someone in her quarters, and the experience was not one he was anxious to re-live. Not to put too fine a point on it, but she had made him suffer for the intrusion for over a year. Taking an ass-chewing for leaving her alone would be forgotten by lunchtime.

Semmes regarded the tactical display thoughtfully after her tirade was over. At length she spoke again. "He's heading into the Hirogen network again."

King had told her as much before, but he sensed she had an idea apart from the obvious truth of this statement.

"They'll feel comfortable hunting inside their net more than near the Great Barrier," she said. "If we deactivate the net in this sector, they'll think Koon did it and come running."

She ran the tips of her fingers over her palms as she considered the problem. "Gnan might feel cheated if we don't point him in the right direction. Tell the puppeteer desk to get ready. I'm going to talk to the good Chieftain again."

"He'll be angry," King warned. "He might not take the lead and run off."

"Then we'll have to pick a fight with him," Semmes said.

--

Levran didn't like the message. He didn't like the person who had delivered it, and he especially didn't like the effect it had on Chieftain Gnan. Whoever it was aboard this _USS Pioneer_, they had a strange sense of what they faced. Hirogen were predators and lived by absolutes. Toying with the passions of such a race seemed not only foolish but suicidal.

The message had been delivered by the same human boy aboard the wayward ship, and the cavalier attitude he assumed was hard to understand. Gnan had spoken to this "David Cabrillo" for over an hour. By the time the link went dead, Gnan was in a rage. The rest of the crew was equally offended and cried for blood. The instant they found Cabrillo, they promised to hang his entrails about his neck and strangle him with them.

That wasn't surprising. Still, Levran found it hard to believe Cabrillo didn't understand that. He mulled it over in his mind for half the day before he settled on what bothered him: Gnan was being baited.

The notion was repulsive to Levran since bait was not the Hirogen way, but it could explain why everyone else was overlooking the idea. He made his way to the Chieftain's quarters and politely spoke through the door, "Chieftain?"

"I don't wish to be disturbed, Levran," Gnan replied.

"Chieftain, I think we're being baited into a confrontation," Levran continued doggedly.

He heard a disgusted grunt on the other side of the door. An instant later the Chieftain's door irised open. Levran stepped through.

Chieftain Gnan wasn't a wealthy Hirogen. The trophies around his quarters were spare and small, but Levran could see a certain flair in them nonetheless. Killing big game was one thing, but finding and killing something no larger than the palm of the hand had its own challenges. Framed in a display case was a beetle no larger than the tip of Levran's thumb. He admired it for a moment before Gnan strolled up next to him.

"Thishan ant," Gnan explained. "That's a queen."

Levran was duly impressed. Thishan ants were venomous and remarkably canny. There was cumulative evidence they were telepathic and thus a collective organism with the cumulative intelligence of each colony. A colony of Thishan ants on the move could kill and devour every living thing in a swath three kilometer wide and hundreds of kilometers long only to vanish without a trace. They were resistant to fire by virtue of their ability to burrow quickly into almost anything underfoot. Individuals couldn't swim, but colonies could bridge rivers by creating buoys out of their used exoskeletons. The only way to stop them was to kill the queen since she was the telepathic nexus of her colony. Finding the queen was the real problem. She was protected by a dense ring of her soldiers and rarely seen above ground. Added to the difficulty was her size and appearance. If she ever was seen above ground, she resembled all of the soldiers surrounding her. There was no way for even a Hirogen to get close enough to pick through the ants by hand, so this trophy had to have been taken some other way.

"I stalked the colony for three weeks," Gnan explained. "I doubt they ever saw me."

Indeed that was nigh on impossible. The ants' venom could kill a fully grown Hirogen in an instant. All it took was one ant to find an exposed section of flesh to inject a powerful neurotoxin into a hunter. Thishan ants were famous for sending a single scout into the camps of those tasked to eliminate them and wiping out an entire extermination crew. The sentient races of their homeworld had fled to the polar caps to avoid them since the ants couldn't tolerate the cold. Hirogen hunters had scoffed when they first heard of the ants. None of the first seventy-five hunting parties sent to the Thishan world had returned.

"I found a good sightline and picked over the colony with an optical scope," Gnan continued. "I spotted her when she was laying an egg."

"What killed her?" Levran asked. Most Hirogen weapons would reduce such a tiny target to nothing so this was a pressing question.

Gnan pointed to a tiny glint of silver on the queen's back. "I had to make the weapon myself out of a low power rail gun with a small-bore barrel. That needle is about half as long as she is and no larger in diameter than one of her own hairs. I shot her from five kilometers away and caught her in her venom sack. The whole colony vomited the stuff up at the same time and died when they choked on it."

Levran had to admit it lacked the glamour of larger prey, but the difficulty of the hunt and kill, let alone the recovery of the queen, had to have been extraordinary. The risks involved were just as high if not higher than even the largest Virsn migration fleet. Maybe even higher than attacking the Pfing or their neighbors the Chunn.

"Impressive," Levran said with sincere admiration.

"Tedious," Gnan corrected, "But rewarding," he added with a smile. "What concerns you, Levran?"

"This Cabrillo isn't who he says he is," Levran said.

"Explain," Gnan demanded.

"He talks to us as if he knows us, yet that can't be the case if he expects to deal with us for his life." Levran detailed the previous conversation point by point to make his case.

Gnan listened attentively before motioning Levran to silence. The Chieftain paced his quarters in silence for over an hour before speaking. "We need to call in the other clans," he announced.

It was an unheard of move in the present age. It shocked Levran to hear the mere suggestion.

"If we're being baited," Gnan reasoned, "this Cabrillo person won't expect to see more than us arrive on his doorstep. There's simply too much firepower spread around the clans."

"I'm not sure I see how this solves the problem," Levran said.

Gnan turned impatient. "The problem as you state it is that we are being led to prey that might turn against us. Any attempt to threaten the Hirogen must pick off single ships at a time since no race remains in this sector capable of repelling us in large numbers."

"But we've never seen this race before," Levran protested. "They could've migrated in from the Delta Quadrant fleeing the Borg."

"Then we'll have fine hunts in the future," Gnan snapped. "Send the call out over the net. We'll find this Cabrillo and make him suffer for the insults he's forced us to endure, but not before we enjoy our share of the kills."

--

The surface of Cove-3 was beautiful in its way. The soil had long ago degenerated to sand from lack of an active ecosystem. Dunes stretched out to every horizon, broken only by barren mountaintops dusted in golden mantles of sand snatched from the abrasive seas below. The sky was a brilliant blue between dust storms, and Kree would lie down and stare at it for hours while David explored the city.

"Sorry if I'm covered in sand whenever you hold me," she told him.

David shrugged, "I'm right next to you when the stars come out."

Kree laughed.

They had volunteered to explore one of the cities so that they might have a little more time alone, and they had been allowed to proceed. However, their shuttle was in high demand, so they were stranded here until someone remembered to pick them up. They didn't mind. David roamed the city in reverent awe, while Kree became more concerned with their day-to-day needs. In theory they could live out their lives here with the supplies they had, but neither was anxious to test that notion. Kree kept in contact with the other shuttles, reported their findings, and digested all the information coming in from around the system. Whoever had abandoned Cove had left literally everything but the water and the ships that carried them away. Dusty linens hung in closets. Tools lay propped on workbenches next to projects as if the craftsmen were only out for a meal. Every room was furnished in a wide variety of décor. Even the rooms of children lay strewn with toys, as if they had laughed and screamed… then inexplicably went silent and marched away from their play. Several tables had petrified food sitting atop dishes and utensils.

David took to calling all of it "surreal" with such frequency Kree demanded he never speak the word in English again. When he offered her the lyrical equivalent in Spanish, she smiled… and sexed him up into silence.

On the second morning, David emerged from the city with an alien box under his arm. "Close your eyes," he commanded.

"What's in there?" she asked.

"Close your eyes and I'll show you," David teased.

She made an exasperated face at him but obeyed. She heard him open the box with a creak of hinges, then felt him settle something on her head that trailed past her ears and down her back to the ground.

"Alright, open them," David told her.

David had placed a headdress of sliver feathers on her head. She had seen the headdresses of the Native Americans, and this one resembled them to a great extent. There was a barrette that held the whole thing to her head, but otherwise the headdress was made entirely of silver feathers. She touched one and was astonished to see the silver had been worked precisely to the texture of real bird feathers. When the wind breezed past her, the headdress lofted ever so slightly off her head.

"Cold?" David asked. He produced a cloak made in the same manner as the headdress and draped it about her shoulders. This wasn't a boa ruffled and gaudy to wrap about the shoulders like a scarf. This was a smooth sheaf of feathers in the tradition of Polynesian and Hawaiian royal garb. The effect of this light, silvery cape on Kree's figure was flattering to say the least. A deeply feminine instinct in her appraised the garment to appease her vanity and judged it worthy of her wardrobe. Her fingers trailed the lining and encountered a delicious soft texture of fluffy down.

"Stunning!" she gasped, "it feels so soft!"

"I don't understand it either," David confessed with a smile. "But I had to see you in it at least once."

Kree rewarded him with a kiss before stepping back from him and twirling about to show off the ensemble. "I can tell you it still feels like feathers," she admitted.

David's expression darkened into puzzlement. "That's the thing," he said uncertainly, "let me show you something else." He produced a single, silver feather and bent it about savagely. He crushed it in his palm, folded it in half, even stomped on it with his boot, but the feather always returned to the shape it was fashioned in.

Kree was horrified at first, but gradually caught on as the demonstration continued. "That strong?" she asked. "I've never seen anything like it."

David frowned at the feather in his hand. "Do you think Gordon needs to see this?"

Kree thought about it for a moment before answering. "Anxious to get back to the ship?" she asked.

"No," he admitted, "but what if we could make the ship this strong?"

Kree had to admit the possibility was worth examining. She called the nearest shuttle and relayed the message to Gordon. The distant engineer promised to send someone in the morning for them, but for the moment he was far too busy to look into it.

David shrugged at the news before glancing at the sky. Gently he slipped the cloak and the headdress back into the box. When he was done, he guided her to the crest of a tall dune and lay her down with her head in his lap. She stared at the blue sky, and he gently traced the contours of her face with his fingertips. "I adore you," he said with a smile and a flourish of his Spanish accent.

"My love," she told him, "I adore you."

He produced the silver feather again and traced it over her ears and neck. "Am I wrong to adorn you with such treasures?" he asked.

She smiled, "Don't think for an instant I find your taste revolting."

He held the feather up speculatively before his eyes. "A silver bird," he thought aloud, "Lord, do you think we can top this?"

"Certainly," Kree assured him, and pulled his hand down to her lips.

--

"Ah," Heartshock said when he saw the images of Cove, "you've stumbled across Sanctuary."

Koon and Okuma exchanged a look, but M'rath stared levelly at the Hirogen with a skeptical eye. "Explain," he asked dubiously.

"Five or six thousand years ago, several species banded together on an easily defensible system to protect themselves from us," Heartshock explained. The huge alien was proving to be a good, even rhapsodic, storyteller. M'rath and the security officers assigned to guard him increasingly treated their time with Heartshock as a prolonged conversation. Heartshock was thrilled to boast about his exploits and those of his people, and he could only marvel at how attentive his audience was. On one occasion the previous week, he told the story of the Hirogen's expulsion from the Gamma Quadrant to an audience of more than twenty fascinated members of the crew. He found the large audience somewhat unsettling at first, but the rows of aliens sitting on the floor before his cell and standing along the walls listened so studiously he found himself caught up in the drama of the story himself. He found the sessions satisfying and enlightening since his guards were quick to draw comparisons to their own histories. The one who had been reading Virgil during his first exchange with M'rath was introducing the Hirogen to a number of plays the big alien rather enjoyed. M'rath remained a fixture in Heartshock's day-to-day routine, but his visits seemed only to set the flavor the day would take.

For his part, M'rath knew he had to keep Heartshock talking. The information was invaluable no matter how trivial Heartshock considered it. The Romulan reviewed all the conversations the crew had with the hunter, and went so far as to instruct anyone seeking an audience with the Hirogen in the proper etiquette before admitting them. The rules he set down were simple: 1: Take care to treat him as you would a dangerous animal, and 2: Always address him with respect.

"So they took the water?" M'rath asked genuinely intrigued.

"Still gone after ages have turned the predators of the time to dust along with their prey," Heartshock mused theatrically. He turned a more analytical expression on M'rath and added, "The system is most dangerous to navigation you realize."

"Yes we know," Okuma said laconically. The strain of piloting all of her ships through the gaps in the static bands had all but drained her resolve. It took Forte and the others fifteen hours of careful, methodical flying to map out each safe path into each planet. She wondered if Magellan had this much trouble with his fabled Straight, or the latter Drake and his trip around Cape Horn. She'd rested after four days in continuous command, and she still felt wasted. Ironically Sophia Shin's original suggestion of warping into close orbit around the planets was the only practical way around Cove. Conventional flight risked setting off the explosive gasses at every turn, but Okuma and her people had detailed charts of the systems channels. The strain of worrying about her people for the past two weeks had worn her down again to an automaton. Still, she wanted to hear what Heartshock knew.

"Legend has it the water was gathered into an ocean about the size of the smallest of the three inhabited worlds," Heartshock said. "Though the ocean builders were skilled, and their creation everything it was supposed to be, they made but one miscalculation," he paused thoughtfully, "the effects of stripping all that water from the system. When they tried to send their ocean into a gateway to a safer system, the star struck at them with solar flares so intense their gateway wavered and sent the ocean to the wrong place. Many died from star's wrath. More died when the Hirogen noted the star's behavior and came to investigate. They fought bravely and died only after a hard fight, but they fled the system and left for their ocean far away."

"Which wasn't where they expected it to be," M'rath concluded.

Heartshock turned thoughtful. "Imagine the heartbreak they must have felt when the new star's light failed to reveal the 'Blue Salvation' of their kind. The shock was so great they fragmented on the spot and almost eliminated each other after thousands of years of cooperative union. A century later, the survivors made another, much smaller ocean, and transported it to a point beyond our net using something called the 'Bridge of the Dammed' and we never heard from them again."

"How much of this is historical fact, Heartshock?" M'rath asked politely.

The huge alien shrugged, and settled his bulk down on his cot. "The details are a little beyond belief aren't they?" he almost laughed. "Still, the story is as I told it."

"How can we be sure of that?" Okuma asked.

Heartshock eased to his feet like a lion stalking prey. In a slow, fluid motion, he eased up to the security field and peered down at Okuma from his imposing height. "One only need to look at this system to find the truth of what I say, Commander," he rumbled almost playfully. Heartshock had difficulty remembering and pronouncing names, so he typically addressed everyone by their rank for the sake of convenience. It was clear he held no particular regard for the ranks his captors affected, but he used them anyway.

Okuma glanced at M'rath. The Romulan nodded back at her, indicating he found what the Hirogen told them plausible. Samantha's trust in M'rath was gradually shifting in his favor. When she came aboard again, she grilled the Captain about the Romulan's behavior, and was shocked to discover M'rath had been hard at work with Speer the entire time. He was pouring over duty logs, orders, messages, directives from Earth, and even referencing them with his rare instructions from Romulus. Koon claimed the information the Romulan had divulged was nothing short of extraordinary, and the examples he cited vividly illustrated his point. In a nutshell, M'rath was well on the way to revolutionizing counterintelligence aboard the ship. Along the way, he was gathering valuable information from the strangest sources. Heartshock was the most relevant at the present, and he was talking quite willingly.

Returning her attention to Heartshock, Okuma managed to hold his gaze without flinching. "I suppose you're right, Heartshock," she conceded, "but why haven't the Hirogen colonized this place again?"

The big alien huffed out a dismissive chuckle. "The place is barren, Commander. We can't stock this place with game, much less live here. Besides, this place is too hazardous to move about."

The hunter's attitude annoyed Okuma. How dare he talk down to her! "Sounds like you lack vision," Samantha snapped.

M'rath stiffened beside her. She saw his hands begin to rise from his sides in a gesture to silence her, but he covered it by slipping them behind his back.

Heartshock seemed to inflate with anger behind the security field. His white eyes blazed over his bared teeth making him look like an alabaster gargoyle. "That..!" he spat the word at the defiant little shrew as if to slice her face open. Samantha noted she was beginning to crane her neck to maintain eye contact. Was he really getting taller?

Then the hunter let out a deep gust of air and sat down. He cradled his head in his hands and stared at the deck of his cell. "I suppose that's true, Commander," he admitted. He sounded weary to the depths of his bones. "I can only wonder what my ancestors would tell me if they saw the decline of my house… and my kind."

"I take it they wouldn't approve," Okuma said almost smugly.

Heartshock met her gaze again and shook his head. "I never noticed it until I actually told someone else, but my species has been on the decline for over forty centuries." There was a note of amazement in his voice and an expression of horror on his face. "I can't explain why I never saw it before."

"Is your empire weakening?" M'rath asked almost reflexively. Samantha wondered if the obsession with toppling empires was hard-wired into the Romulan genome. "Is there a faction that would offer us assistance?"

Heartshock shook his head. "What empire?" he asked rhetorically. "I'm a noble, and I never wielded power beyond my own ship. The best I can say is Hirogen are bonded by blood." He thoughtfully considered his words before adding, "For now."

--

The ship was in worse shape than anyone suspected. Peyter read a long list of damage compiled around the ship as more and more of it was dismantled. Even at his demonic speed to absorb the written words it took several minutes to take in. To hear the engineers explain it, _Pioneer_ had been held together by little more than hope and will. Much of the internal skeleton was shattered. Reports from deck 7 claimed the duratanium bracing between the bulkheads was reduced to powder. Only the surrounding decks kept deck 7 from collapse. Nobody had suspected it until this morning. Deck 3 had been evacuated since the Hirogen attack, but the radiation in that section was spreading into the surrounding structure. Everything in that area would have to be discarded since reducing the radiated matter to something usable would burn up every replicator on the ship in short order.

As more cropped up, Peyter's people found excuses to visit the surrounding planets. He didn't blame them. He wouldn't mind having an atmosphere close over his head again. He planned a long hike on Cove-3 across a mountain ridge later this week, but for now he was content to manage the refit up close.

What Eddie planned to do sounded simple in theory. Each deck would be reconstructed one at a time while the deck directly above it was being demolished. They started with the saucer section since living conditions would deteriorate rapidly once the resources of the shuttles started to give out. Peyter judged they had three weeks before he had to start moving personnel back aboard. Eddie should have at least three fully functioning decks completed in that time out of a total of fifteen. Allowing for mishaps, delays, and outright mistakes, Koon thought Eddie might have at least one deck ready before things started to go critical. It worried him, but not overmuch.

Peyter could handle the pressure. He wished he could confide in someone aboard, but that would mean burdening someone with his job. He wished his wife Nancy was here to talk to. She'd been insightful with any dilemma he presented to her. She didn't always have an answer for him, but she had a way of keeping him pointed in the right direction. Not that he was worried he was doing anything wrong at the moment. He had little choice but to take this precise course of action. The ship was in shambles and had to be restored, the crew was exhausted and needed some rest, and he needed a little time to hide out and survey the situation. He really didn't know if there was anything to doubt about his decisions, but talking it over with Nancy would be soothing. Instead he was alone with his burdens.

Peyter Koon the officer and Captain was a misleading persona from Peyter Koon the man. Captain Koon was aloof and magnificent. Peyter Koon was friendly and flawed. Captain Koon was fatherly and wise. Peyter Koon was anxious and plagued by doubts. Captain Koon could take the deaths of his crew in stride. Peyter Koon was coming apart with grief and wept over every loss in private. It was the age old dichotomy of what it was to be a leader and what one had to be in order to be a man. In many ways Peyter hated being a Captain, or more precisely, he hated what he had to become in order to command. A man could be generous and attentive to those he cared about. A Captain had to be rather callous and downright selfish at times in order to look after the needs of his crew.

On the other hand, Captain Koon had much to offer the man who embodied him. The granite will to persevere stoically while those about him collapsed came from the disciplined manner of a seasoned officer not the morally troubled soul of Peyter Koon. Captain Koon could take the long view of the plight of _Voyager_ and find numerous excuses, good ones, why he shouldn't risk _Pioneer_ in such a foolhardy mission. However Peyter Koon couldn't accept abandoning Katie Janeway and her people to the mercies of the Delta Quadrant. In an ironic twist, Captain Koon was the only one capable of shifting his long view to the path his conscience demanded without becoming overwhelmed. Only his training as an officer allowed Peyter Koon to accept a mission that was likely to consume the rest of his life. Captain Koon, not Peyter Koon, could accept the bleak prospect the next thirty-odd years promised. Decades of loneliness, years away from his family, and (most important) the inevitable losses he was liable to accrue during that time.

That much Peyter understood about himself. What he didn't understand was how much he'd changed in the past few months. His crew was beginning to see Peyter Koon the Man in small doses, and they were both shocked and endeared by what they were finding. Samantha had seen it when she'd come to speak of her feelings for Forte. Emily had seen it when she'd presented herself to Koon with her pregnancy. The entire crew had seen it when he'd defiantly told them (in not so many words) that Starfleet could be damned and they would make their own way out to _Voyager_. Slowly, a new appreciation of Captain Koon was emerging just as his command style shifted with the character of the man. His crew would have been able to describe it better than he, but the tone they would all adopt would be one of confidence.

Samantha would tell him she trusted him more than ever for slightly selfish reasons. Even with the ship falling apart around her, she felt better than she had in years with someone adoring her as a woman. It helped her deal with the inevitable resentment the rest of the crew felt for her. She knew what she did was essential for the greater good, but the rest of the crew could afford to be short-sighted and petty behind her back. Her blooming affair with Forte took the edge off the sneers and sharp words she endured day after day.

Emily would tell him she was grateful for lifting a burden off her shoulders and accepting it cheerfully. Somehow the prospect of motherhood was not the looming threshold of unrelenting toil she'd thought it would be. With Koon's input, she could look upon the forthcoming child with giddy excitement. She knew she wouldn't be alone with her burden, and not only that, but Koon gently but confidently assured her it was going to be fun. She felt a kinship with the man akin to that of her father. It was a relief to know she wasn't alone and Koon wouldn't allow her to be alone with her condition.

David Cabrillo was overjoyed to be trusted by his Captain. After so long alone and doubting his utility, Koon had casually brought the young man into the center of things. The pride Koon instilled in Cabrillo wasn't producing arrogance as a byproduct but a deep-seated desire to perform at the peak of his skills for his Captain and by extension the rest of the crew.

At an instinctive level, Peyter understood all this. He knew he'd stepped outside his guise as an officer time and again in recent months, but he couldn't put into words why he'd done so. He only knew it was bearing fruit. In a very real sense _Pioneer_ was wrecked on a barren outcropping of rock completely unable to support the lives of his crew. Mutinies, chaos, and bloodshed were endemic to such circumstances and had overwhelmed Captains far better than Peyter Koon. The crew had every right to turn a baleful eye on the man who'd ordered them to take off after a distant goal by a rout that had all but killed the lot of them at a stroke. Instead they were looking to him for guidance, assurance, and purpose. He could supply all that almost without effort so long as they trusted him.

There was a knock at the door disturbing Koon from his reverie. He got up to answer it.

Eddie stood at the door looking refreshed and cheerful. "I've got a request, sir."

"Is it time for the harvest mission?" Koon asked.

"Give it another week before we move on that, Captain," Eddie said. "We need the antimatter, but I'd rather have a solid timetable before I risk having so much of it around."

"You forget it might be hard to come by even at the Great Barrier," Koon pointed out. "Harvesting the stuff might be more time consuming than building the new warp core."

Eddie nodded. "Fair point, but transporting enough to take us to the Delta Quadrant would require heavy modifications to at least a dozen shuttles. I was under the impression we needed those for running around the system."

"We do," Koon admitted, "but we need the antimatter worse. If the saucer section was operable, I'd send it along to get the whole batch and keep the shuttles around." His expression froze as an idea dawned on him.

Eddie was oblivious. "I could get started," he sighed. "It'll take me two days to install the carriers. Forte and Okuma won't like taking them out of rotation, but I can do each individually and keep as many active for as long as I can."

"How much antimatter do we need, Eddie?" Koon asked thoughtfully.

"Thirty or fifty _i_-tons," Eddie answered without hesitation. "Containing the stuff is harder than transporting it. It doesn't take up much volume, but we have to keep it in elemental stasis until we need it. Large quantities have to be transported in several small containers."

"How much would we need to return to the Great Barrier and harvest the rest with the rebuilt ship?" Koon asked. "Could we simply run the ship on the old core to get back?"

Eddie's eyes narrowed in thought. "We can't run the whole ship on the old core with the new power harness we're building," he explained. "Be like trying to light a fire with soggy kindling during a downpour."

"Can we use the antimatter from the old core to get us back to the Great Barrier?" Koon asked hoping the idea was solid.

Eddie sighed again. "I had to vent most of it to keep the bloody thing from breaching," he admitted. He calculated mentally what he needed and shook his head. "No," he said decisively. "What we have I'm gonna' need for fabricating parts for the refit and our supplies. What's left after that could get us about a third of the way back to the Barrier, half-way at most."

"How much do we need for a trip back to the Barrier?" Koon asked again.

"Six hundred _i_-kilos at high warp, maybe as little as fifty at an economical cruising speed," Eddie said.

"How many shuttles would that take?" Koon asked.

Eddie blinked in surprise. "One," he said sounding confused. "Shit, sir, that amount could be stashed in a desk drawer."

"Modify two shuttles for the harvest mission. That should be plenty to get the rest of the ship back to the Great Barrier," Koon ordered.

Eddie made a face. "Isn't that a little risky, Captain? We know we have Hirogen looking for us back there after all."

"I know," Koon said, "but the shuttles will be in more danger than us no matter how many we send."

He watched Eddie pace the corridor uncertainly. Gordon was many things but he was grossly conservative when it came to engineering. Returning to the Great Barrier wasn't in doubt, it was precisely what the refit was designed for, but returning with only a fraction of the energy they needed offended his basic sensibilities. "It'd be risky," he repeated. "The Hirogen could pick off both shuttles and we'd never know for months."

"That's why I'll send the best out there, Eddie," Koon said. "If the best I have can't sneak past the Hirogen, nobody can."

"But what if the way to the Barrier is blocked?" Eddie protested. "They could stir a bloody hornet's nest out there and we'd be left stranded trying to find the shortest route to refuel."

"Let me worry about that, Commander," Koon said. "How long will it take to modify the shuttles?"

Gordon shrugged, "A few hours."

"Get started in the morning," Koon ordered.


	9. Constantine

**Chapter 9**

**Constantine**

_The whole concept of the _Caesar_-class is about brute force. Much like the dreadnoughts they descend from, there is nothing subtle about their might. Anyone confronting one of these ships should be swept aside by sheer awe if not their firepower._

-Dr. Mark Forsythe: Chief designer

Sol System: Starfleet Headquarters, San Francisco

Admiral Perry Richelieu strolled through the opulent corridors of Starfleet Headquarters like a monarch. His pace was measured, he held his head high, and his clear blue eyes unflinchingly regarded anyone in his path. He was a man accustomed to power. He was also a man of stylized tastes. He thought of his role in Starfleet as that of a powerful minister in the court of powerful kings like his famous namesake. Much of his demeanor was affected to produce a cultured, thoughtful appearance. The casual observer could see at a glance that this Admiral was one of extraordinary significance. All that said, Richelieu took great pains not to appear arrogant. The three stripes on his uniform cuffs denoted his rank of Vice Admiral, but that was the only flagrant admission to his rank he would allow. The head of Section 31 could not allow himself to crow his purpose from the rooftops as any of the master spies in ages past could testify.

The same could not be said of the man next to him.

The man had only two stripes on his uniform cuff, but the rest of the uniform was overpowering next to the simple tunic of his superior. Rear Admiral John Clay Forrestal had always loved opulent uniforms and wore the absolute limit the law would allow. Gold epaulets, crimson piping, clawed shoulder boards, and a com badge polished almost white with brilliance adorned his proud frame. It was the man beneath the glitter that made the figure pathetic. Forrestal hunched over even though he was already short. He nervously wrung his hands and refused to meet others in the eye. It was the manners of a weasel put on full display walking next to a lion in the prime of life. It wasn't a flattering comparison by any standard.

"The operation has been clumsy, Admiral," Richelieu announced with a regal tilt to his nose.

"You talk as though you could have done better," Forrestal muttered. "Something on this scale is hard to keep quiet."

Richelieu regarded his subordinate with formalized disdain. "As a point of fact I could. Had Admiral Grinnell not delegated the personnel problems to your command, I would've taken care of this myself. I see that as a grave miscalculation on both Thad's and my judgment presently."

"So glad there is enough blame to go around," Forrestal growled.

The older man ignored the comment. "You wanted out, _Jean_," Richelieu pointed out with barbed emphasis on the Gallic pronunciation of Forrestal's first name. He knew John Clay Forrestal stood on a great deal of ceremony whenever he could, and the casual use of his first name would gall the arrogant son of a bitch. "The general rule runs in stark contrast to your wishes."

Irritated, Forrestal almost spluttered his outrage. "You agreed to allow me to retire!"

Richelieu nodded patiently. "Indeed I have," he allowed. "Your performance has all but exposed our larger operations to Admiral Paris and Admiral Ross. I'm close enough to them to know how much they've learned, but there's that pesky Commander Porter asking some embarrassing questions to deal with yet."

"He'll soon forget his time with me," Forrestal said with a dismissive wave of his hand. "I gave him his dream post after all was said and done. That should put his thoughts elsewhere until the Dominion is handled."

Richelieu shook his head. "Or the _Thunderchild_ is destroyed in this war," he said with a disgusted humph. "Honestly, _Jean_, you've left me with quite a mess. The only difference between this and sacking you is timing."

"You wanted those people processed," Forrestal pointed out. "You also wanted loose ends tied up. I've done all that short of Peyter and his people. For all I know they're already taken care of."

The other man hid his alarm and outrage well. "I would advise you to watch what you say in public, Admiral, or I shall be forced to remove your memories of sensitive operations," he said casually. "Don't tempt me to lobotomize you out of spite," he added as if commenting on the weather.

Forrestal wasn't impressed. "I'd like to see you try, Perry," he sneered.

Richelieu stopped walking and faced Forrestal. "You have high blood pressure, Admiral," he announced as if scolding the younger man. "It would be a shame if you were to suffer some health malady as a result of your inattentive concern for your longevity."

Forrestal's confident gaze faltered. Soon his eyes narrowed as a brilliant flash of pain seared his skull. Another enormous stab of pain filled his chest and he went breathless.

"You see," Richelieu explained to the dying man, "We can't allow you to be careless. Steps have been taken to preserve your obedience even after you leave my command."

Forrestal clutched at his collar struggling for breath.

Richelieu lectured on casually. "You'll be allowed to leave, and you'll be allowed to live, Admiral. However, I'm not of a mind to let you get away from us without some form of control. You cross us, and you'll end your time very quickly and very painfully." He stopped and placed a hand on Forrestal's shoulder. The younger man's knees buckled and he sunk to the floor. "You're ill, _Jean_. Are you suffering a heart attack? By all that is Holy, you must feel a remarkable amount of pain presently."

Forrestal groped helplessly at Richelieu for balance. Never in his life had he suffered this magnitude of agony.

"Stand up, Admiral, this behavior is unseemly!" Richelieu snapped.

The pain slowly eased, and Forrestal drew an agonized breath. Slowly he regained his feet, but he was unsteady on his legs and leaned heavily against a wall. "You… need… me…" he managed to gasp a moment later.

"Not that badly, Admiral," Richelieu said calmly. "But if I need a scapegoat, you'll do nicely. Dismissed."

Forrestal marched shakily down the corridor. Richelieu watched him go. He had half a mind to let the fool die anyway.

Another man sidled up to Perry and watched Forrestal retreat from them. "God grant we never have to suffer his arrogant ass again," Admiral Thaddeus Grinnell growled.

"We mustn't blame everything on him, Thad," Richelieu pointed out.

Grinnell snorted. "Don't spoil the moment for me, Perry."

Forrestal rounded the end of the corridor and was gone at last. "Shall we?" Grinnell asked indicating his office. When they were securely inside, Grinnell activated a scrambler device so they could talk openly. Anyone trying to listen in on their conversation would get nothing but silence. "Should we let Semmes loose?" he asked as he sat down behind his desk. "She's been begging to gun down Koon directly for years."

"Let her find Koon first," Richelieu temporized. "For all we know one of the others out that way will stumble upon him."

Grinnell thrummed his fingers on his desk thoughtfully for a moment. "The others," he mused quietly. "Damnit, how the hell did we let the operation go this far awry?"

It was a point Richelieu marveled at as well. OPERATION TARTAR was conceived under his guidance to overcome the Dominion. The existence of the Bajoran wormhole had been suspected for fifty years by Section 31 analysts. Artifacts from the Gamma Quadrant kept cropping up in that sector. Shortly after Deep Space Nine opened the wormhole for free transit, one of Richelieu's agents had quietly slipped into the Alpha Quadrant after an absence of over two decades. The information in the agent's possession had Section 31 deeply concerned. The military might of the Dominion could threaten the Federation. Since the spymaster wasn't one to sit and passively await developments, he launched TARTAR as a preemptive strike.

In theory it should have worked fairly well. A fleet of Section 31's biggest and most powerful dreadnoughts would take the long way around through the Gamma Quadrant and drive the Dominion into the wormhole where a larger, combined fleet of Section 31 dreadnoughts and Starfleet vessels would crush the military might of the Founders. Richelieu would doctor the intelligence fed to the Federation Security Council so that the ensuing battle would look like they had blunted an invasion. The transwarp drives on the _Caesar_-class would allow them to transit the distance between Earth and The Great Link in a little over a year, plenty of time to set the groundwork on the near side of the wormhole. USS _Diocletian_, USS _Trajan_, and USS _Constantine_ were already on their way towards the Delta Quadrant on a mission to monitor and overcome the Borg. It would take little effort to turn them 90 degrees to port and send them to the Dominion instead. USS _Caligula_, USS _Caesar_, USS _Hadrian_, USS _Nero_, USS _Augustus_, and USS _Justinian_ were deployed three years ago to meet up with their distant sisters on the far side of Tholian space. They were to arrive in the unsuspecting Dominion sixteen months after the Bajoran wormhole was seized by Deep Space Nine.

At the time, the mission to destroy USS _Pioneer_ had been an afterthought. Her unsuspected cargo couldn't be allowed to survive inside the Alpha Quadrant, but surely Section 31 could wreck the ship somewhere in the 3KPC arm.

Unfortunately _Pioneer_ kept plodding along towards the Great Barrier despite every effort to run her afoul of the cosmic detritus inside the dust cloud surrounding the Galactic Core. One delay led to another until the timetable was almost wrecked. To compound the problem, the Dominion upstaged Richelieu's plan by preempting the current war. In the chaotic first months of the shooting, OPERATION TARTER was quietly forgotten.

To further compound the problem, John Clay Forrestal had lost his nerve. When the flagship of the reinforcement squadron arrived on the far side of Tholian space, the _Diocletian, Trajan, _and_ Constantine_ were still scouring the 3KPC arm behind _Pioneer_. Forrestal, caught with his forces deployed in the wrong sector of the Milky Way, ordered the dreadnoughts to link up in the 3KPC arm, and see to the destruction of _Pioneer_. His reasoning being he could deploy the united fleet of dreadnoughts from this sector should the tactical situation decline in the Alpha quadrant.

At the same time, Admiral Grinnell was working the older _Pharaoh_-class fleet to good effect against the Dominion. While they couldn't quite drive the Jem'Haddar back, the _Pharaoh_'s had slowed them enough in certain sectors to ensure Section 31 remained a cohesive unit. Unfortunately they were all working independently. It was the considered opinion of Grinnell and his Captains that a combined action with the dreadnoughts inside the Alpha Quadrant could land a telling blow against the Dominion, but there was no way at present to permit it. Grinnell's ships were running madly about the Alpha and Beta Quadrants putting out brush fires and shoring up the tactical situation so that they could recombine and face the Dominion head-on.

Forrestal vacillated with his tactical reserve while Grinnell kept dangling the go order just out of reach. He'd almost recalled the _Caesar_'s from the 3KPC arm a dozen times in the past year, but he lost his nerve every time, convinced OPERATION TARTAR would be reactivated under a new guise and he would find his ships out of position again.

In the mean time Forrestal kept the _Diocletian_ and her sisters busy learning about the Great Barrier and the races around it. The Hirogen were emerging as a threat as great, or potentially greater, than the Dominion. The race was almost as populace as the Klingon Empire and dominated a region of space stretching from the unseen hinterlands just beyond the Romulan border with the Delta Quadrant to Kazon territories. They weren't expansionist, but they also lacked a central government. The conditions were right inside Hirogen society for a revolution. All that was required was a charismatic leader or a cause to unite the disparate clans into an Empire once again.

In a nutshell, Richelieu and Grinnell had the murkiest of pictures to sort out now that Forrestal was gone.

"I may have something to settle things out that way," Richelieu offered.

Grinnell shook his head skeptically. "The _Khufu_ called in an hour ago. The damage Captain Morris sustained over Min Hirrin is worse than they thought. Estimates are ranging toward fourteen months to get her back into action."

Richelieu winced. USS _Khufu_ was one of their precious _Pharaoh_-class dreadnoughts. Her loss meant her priceless and talented crew of 1,500 was effectively put out of action until they could be reassigned or the ship redeployed. It was a net loss of five percent to Section 31.

"Can you get Hawthorn to make room for her?" Grinnell asked.

Vice Admiral Hawthorn Rand was the Master Shipwright of Mars Utopia Planitia Space Yards and head of the Starfleet Corps of Engineers or SCE as it was more commonly called. Richelieu had gone to the Academy with Rand and as such he'd been able to pull a few favors with the production and docking schedules including the entire production run of the _Caesar_-class.

Richelieu shook his head. "Mars is backlogged for the next three years. We'd be lucky to be served coffee there. Jupiter is out as well. The accident board is still reviewing that explosion over the Ganymede docks so the whole station is shut down."

Grinnell put a disgusted expression on his face. "I wish we could tell them it really was sabotage so they'd get on with it."

"That would reveal our source," Richelieu said firmly.

Grinnell nodded wearily. The life of a spymaster was one of incessant paranoia. The appeal of being in Section 31 was that they were privy to all the fascinating secrets that could change the destiny of mankind. The irony was that they could rarely act on the information they managed lest they wreck their interlocking network of informants. The moment they told someone about what they knew, a secret (something they attended to with religious zeal) was destroyed.

"How about Venus?" Grinnell asked.

"They can't handle something that big," Richelieu pointed out. "And besides, I don't trust them. Their people are accustomed to civilian ships. We can't trust them with one of our computer cores."

"That leaves Neptune and Pluto," Grinnell mused. "Does the guy out there repair ships?"

"He has an old spacedock he loans out to the other yards, but it's just a junkyard orbiting Charon." Richelieu found himself shaking his head in dismay. "I don't trust Triton Station, but they have the capacity."

Grinnell chuckled, "How did they get that awful reputation?"

"They've been a clearing house for retirees and malcontents for twenty years," Richelieu explained. "I understand a sizable percentage of their people aren't fit to serve in the Fleets for some reason or the other."

"On the other hand we're out of options," Grinnell mused. "I'll tell Morris to cut the flight plan as soon as he's underway."

Richelieu watched his subordinate type out the orders while his mind wandered onto other topics. At length he asked, "Can you handle the extra load with Forrestal gone?"

Grinnell's response was an absent-minded grunt while he continued to frame the message on his desk. "Not a problem," he murmured as though the extra load was a trifling thing. It wasn't by any measure. By assuming command of Forrestal's only operational fleet, he was increasing the size of his command by a third.

"They've been adrift out there for quite a while," Richelieu warned.

"I've been thinking about that," the younger man admitted. "How about I promote Captain Jones to Rear Admiral in direct command of those ships?"

Richelieu liked the idea. Forrestal had sent the entire assembly of ships off without so much as a Commodore to oversee them. He'd explained this away by pointing out he had direct contact with all the ships via pulse link so there was no need to be on the scene with them nor was there a need to delegate the responsibility to someone in the Fleet. Nobody was fooled however. John Clay Forrestal was on an ego trip with so much power under his command, and he loathed giving up even a fraction of his authority. The choice of Captain Howard Jones on the other hand intrigued him. "Why Jones?" he asked.

"Command in Control in all truth," Grinnell said with a shrug. "The _Constantine_ has the most extensive communications array in the Fleet next to the _Diocletian_. I'd promote Sassak on the _Nero_, but he doesn't have a suitable XO to step in as Captain."

"You're not considering Semmes," it wasn't a question.

Grinnell shook his head and stifled a laugh. "I'll put her behind a desk in San Francisco, but I'm not about to put her at the head of all that firepower in the field. She has the ambition, but she lacks patience. We can't expect the other Captains to trust that sort of reputation."

The senior Admiral nodded agreement.

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**_USS Pike's Cutoff_: Near the Great Barrier**

Lieutenant David Cabrillo dolefully regarded the view outside the shuttle as the spectacle of the Great Barrier emerged out of the blackness. After a month aboard the shuttle with Lieutenant Forte, he was missing Kree to distraction. Fortunately Forte was just as distracted as David. As it was, the two young men had run out of things to talk about during the second day into the journey. They tried to be civil, but the cramped space of the cabin made privacy impossible. David wished Kree were here to talk to and touch. He didn't know it, but Forte was of the same mind regarding Samantha. The subject of their personal relationships hadn't come up since David was afraid of being discovered and Forte wasn't one to discuss such things in the first place. It was a shame. Other than their recent success with women, the two young men had almost nothing in common.

Two more different men could scarcely be produced from Koon's crew. Darin Forte was short and muscular. David Cabrillo was imposingly tall and rail thin. Forte was athletic and graceful. David was academic and awkward. Forte was at the center of the social hub aboard _Pioneer_. David was an outcast. Forte was charming. David was shy. Forte came from a broken home. David came from a family steeped in tradition and closely bonded. Forte worked with Kree and loved Samantha. David most often worked alone and loved Kree. It was a shame the only common ground they shared, both discreetly sidestepped. Otherwise they might have had a better time of it.

"Halfway done," Forte said with a tone of mixed relief and resignation.

The realist in David felt the need to set Forte straight. "Actually, we need to find the antimatter first. From our data banks from the first time we passed through here, small pockets of a few _i_-grams are scattered all across…" He trailed off when he noticed Forte glaring at him.

"I know, Cabrillo," Forte growled. "Just get started looking for the stuff so we can go home."

David nodded and scanned his instruments absently. Forte's tone told him that Darin was at wits end with his companionship. It hurt his pride anew to realize Forte considered David nothing short of inept. After being with Kree almost every night for three weeks, his fragile ego had begun to mend. A solid month of frosty silence from Darin had all but erased his self-confidence again. "This may take a while," he warned.

"So long a Spaulding is working on the problem, you work on the problem, Lieutenant," Forte growled before moving back to the rear of the shuttle to prep the storage equipment.

David glanced out the shuttle canopy and thought he saw the tiny spec of the other shuttle roving about the surface of the Great Barrier. Dr. Spaulding had volunteered for this job surprising everyone. He and Lieutenant Duggig were in the other shuttle. Duggig was fresh out of Fahdlan's sic bay and eager to get some more flight time logged in before he got rusty. Spaulding's motives were a little less prosaic. With all the scientists swarming over the Cove system, he wanted a chance to shine alone. He said he wanted to study the Great Barrier up close again, and if they wanted him to look for antimatter while he was at it, he was happy to oblige. The chief scientist was overqualified for the chore, but he'd come anyway. David suspected Spaulding still distrusted him after he'd shown him up while they were approaching Cove.

Cabrillo returned his attention to his instruments and sighed. He was finding trace evidence of antimatter in the slow fusion gases but only nano _i_-grams. Gathering it would be like moving a sand dune one grain at a time with tweezers. _Better get started_, he thought. He wanted to see, and especially feel, Kree again. After a month without her, he was willing to move whatever mountains he had to in order to kiss her lips again. The thought of her fingers raking through his hair made him twice as eager to return and he slogged away at the tedious chore for the next ten hours before letting up.

When Darin returned to the front of the shuttle for his shift at the controls, his sour temper was somewhat mollified by all the diligent effort David had put in. "That's a good start," he admitted as he sat down. "Go get some sleep."

Cabrillo was shocked at how exhausted he was when he moved to stand. He managed a quick pass by the head before dropping into his bunk. He was asleep before he hit the pillow.

Darin was chagrined, but he soon focused his attention just as fiercely on the job at hand. He was going to smother Samantha with kisses when they got back, he resolved. A month without her after their brief time together was agonizing. He noted David had filled up a tenth of the antimatter storage in a single sitting. He had no idea what had motivated the kid to work so diligently, but he knew what his reasons were. He set to work just as hard as Cabrillo had.

In the end they spent five days near the Great Barrier. The two young men passed almost the entire time in silence, fixed on gathering the traces of antimatter and their reasons for getting back to the ship soon. Spaulding lacked their motivation, but he had more finesse finding larger pockets of the stuff. He finished filling his storage bunkers with antimatter about an hour after Forte told him they were done.

The two shuttles turned around, and slipped back into warp oblivious to the Hirogen node that had been watching them the whole time. The node dutifully tracked their flight path and sent the information out to the rest of the network.

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_**HPS Kresh:**_

Levran surveyed the reports from the Hirogen net thoughtfully. He had to admit the information didn't mesh with what he knew. All aboard the ship agreed he had a unique knowledge of the strangers since he was the only one who had actually seen this _USS Pioneer_ firsthand. He knew the ship was heavily damaged, heavily armed, and surprisingly nimble. The power output demonstrated was exponentially greater than anything he'd ever seen. Since the Hirogen had hunted much of the local civilizations to extinction, large, powerful ships of this kind were rare. There were the Borg cubes of course, but they avoided this region of Hirogen territory.

The Hirogen held the distinction of being one of the few races capable of surviving the Borg even after centuries of sustained contact. The reason they succeeded where others were assimilated was difficult to understand especially to the Hirogen who considered the Borg nothing more than a nuisance. Since the hunters measured each race by their ability to avoid detection or face down them in individual combat, the Borg figured poorly in Hirogen estimation. There was even a dubious sport in taking the ugly Cubes down. All it took was inserting a Hirogen adaptive sensor program into the Cube's internal network to overload the system in nanoseconds. Asking the regimented brutes to adapt their senses to the full reality all Hirogen lived with day to day quickly overcame Borg networks. Even though they prided themselves (if any Borg could be said to have pride) on adaptability, making this central feature of their psyche work against them was something they couldn't defend against. In a way neither the Borg nor the Hirogen understood they were diametrically opposed. The Collective represented the ultimate expression of the herd animal where their power came from their concentrated numbers and organization. The Hirogen on the other hand were the most refined expression of predation in the Milky Way. They were hunters forged on skills refined over 80,000 years.

The few Hirogen who were assimilated couldn't shed light on how to defend the Collective. Much like their net, the average Hirogen didn't understand how the program worked, and simply accepted that it did work and worked well. So the Borg simply avoided the Hirogen correctly assuming the race would soon destroy itself as its culture fragmented into ever more powerless clans.

_Pioneer_ was something else altogether. In the mentality of a hunter, it was the classic example of an animal separated from its herd. Wounded and alone the ship, however large and powerful, could be overcome by a determined predator. The only snag was finding it in the first place.

Then there were the messages from this David Cabrillo. Something bothered Levran about the man. Trained from infancy to observe behavioral differences, Levran knew from observing the conversations between Gnan and Cabrillo that the human was acting strangely. To begin with, Cabrillo had a distinctly feminine turn of mind. Hirogen wisdom maintained the male mind tended to focus while the female mind tended to multitask. Cabrillo had kept Gnan off balance by shifting the subject often. While not unheard of in a male to have this ability, the trait always took on a particular character that focused around the emotional state of the man. Cabrillo's manner shifted with the facts he was discussing, and that never happened in a man. Why would a treasonous man drop his masculine thought process? The shift threatened his ability to reason effectively.

There were other things that bothered Levran about Cabrillo. Why would someone who'd narrowly survived a Hirogen attack appeal to his attackers for protection? The human didn't have the leverage to pull off an escape. What did Cabrillo stand to gain by baiting Gnan? Everything Levran knew from this sort of behavior added up to an ambush of some sort. Hirogen were adept at overcoming ambushes, so the notion of setting one in place held little merit. Did Cabrillo understand this and take precautions to protect himself? The human was too smart to believe he could take down Hirogen alone.

Then there was the data coming in from the net. Something large had flown past the Great Barrier a month ago. After examining the data carefully, Levran knew the object was at least three times the size of _Pioneer_ from the footprint of the warp drive. Not only that, but the warp signature was a multistage pulse drive compared to the lower output of _Pioneer_'s continuous field drive. Did _Pioneer_ have sister ships in the region? Certainly her behavior didn't support the notion. The strange ship had fled into deep space instead of seeking out a possible star to affect a rendezvous. Examining _Pioneer_'s warp signature in detail on the net indicated the strange ship had fled at peril to itself much like an animal chewing off a limb caught in a trap. _Pioneer_'s warp drive was decaying rapidly. With protection from a larger ship, it made more sense for _Pioneer_ to sit tight and wait for the herd to gather around it while she licked her wounds.

Lastly there was the appearance of the two shuttles near the Great Barrier. This data at least offered something less ambiguous to consider. After consulting with the Master Tracker aboard the ship, Levran presented a plan to Gnan. It made sense that the shuttles were gathering antimatter off the Great Barrier; therefore it made sense that they could lead them back to _Pioneer_. Even though this data didn't concur with what Cabrillo told them or the presence of the larger ship in the area, it did offer something they could act on Gnan could understand.

The trouble was the shuttles were not in a terribly convenient place. Gnan had been on the way to the Dafli system to consult with the rest of his clan and a few of the other clans in the region. The sudden appearance of _Pioneer_ along with the unforgivable intrusion into the Hirogen net in recent months had every clan concerned. It didn't escape their attention the distant _USS Voyager_ in the Delta Quadrant bore a familial resemblance to _Pioneer_. What little data they had on _Voyager_ supported the notion the two ships came from the same place. Captain Janeway had manipulated the net without Hirogen consent and it wasn't much of a stretch to assume _Pioneer_ was in the region as a consequence.

The Hirogen Clans were outraged with Janeway. Chieftain Fo'goro had sent all of his ships after her in the distant Delta Quadrant, and was aggressively hunting _Voyager_. So far Fo'goro had not found the distant ship. What he had found was something even more tantalizing. The Kazon: vast race of warrior clans at the far end of the Delta Quadrant and only a few short light years from the reach of the Hirogen net. The word from Fo'goro was that the Kazon were formidable in single combat and demonically hard to find. Fo'goro was powerless to stop his Clan (and himself) as the hunt for _Voyager_ soon degenerated into a glorious free-for-all in Kazon space. Even now, Hirogen ships from almost all the other Clans were racing to the Kazon frontier in the hopes they wouldn't miss out on the glory. When reports from the Delta Quadrant came back that Hirogen hunters and Hirogen ships were falling to the Kazon in the fighting, every hunter rejoiced. At last they had worthy prey!

Chieftain Gnan took in the news from Fo'goro without comment. Levran suspected Gnan was disappointed Fo'goro had lost sight of what was turning out to be the most elusive prey in the entire Galaxy: _Voyager_. Furthermore, Gnan was growing concerned with the pressure from his own crew to head out to Kazon space and join the hunt. Gnan was a hunter of principle and patience. _Relentless_ would be a more accurate way to describe him. Once he had a certain prey in his sights, Gnan would not allow himself to be distracted until he had his kill. This trait had filled his trophy cabinet with some of the rarest specimens in Hirogen culture, and he was not about to change his ways without full consideration. The trip to meet with the other Clansmen at Dafli was part of his way to fully think through the dilemma.

More than anything, Gnan was outraged by the messages from Cabrillo. He was irritated he was being baited by the whelp. He was angry with himself for allowing Cabrillo to control their conversations. And he was furious the boy was using the Hirogen net to single him out. The whole affair kept Gnan's thoughts with _Pioneer_ instead of the distant Kazon.

Levran presented his thoughts on _Pioneer_ shortly after he detected the shuttles roaming around the Great Barrier. Gnan, unlike Heartshock, digested the information carefully; pacing the deck around the central hologram like an animal in a cage. At length he asked, "How long ago was Heartshock's encounter?" He paused then added, "I need an answer in standard days."

It was an odd fact that all their prey lived on worlds that had a daily cycle of about the same length give or take a few minutes. The "standard cycle" day was divided up into 25 hours. The reasoning behind the specific nature of the request was easy to explain. All creatures were active and rested at intervals dictated by the cycle of a single day. Only so much got done in a single day. Even with the large crew aboard _Pioneer_, a fraction of that crew would always be resting. A skilled tracker could make innumerable estimations based on such a timetable. "Forty-one standard days," Levran answered without hesitation.

Gnan paced the deck thoughtfully some more staring at the holographic star chart in the center of the room. He examined the course headings carefully. He wandered round and round the hologram until his finger jabbed at a pyramid shaped cluster of stars. "There," he said decisively.

Master Tracker Cark was surprised. "Sanctuary?" he blurted before he could stop himself.

"Where would you hide, Cark?" Gnan asked with a smug grin.

"They can't know about the legends of that place," Cark protested.

"That Cabrillo boy knows an awful lot more than he's telling us," Gnan pointed out.

The Master Tracker was unconvinced. "How would he find these things out in the first place without us to tell him?"

"Does it really matter?" Gnan asked.

Cark considered the notion carefully before shaking his head, "No, Chieftain," he said with a resigned sigh.

Gnan surveyed the bridge making eye contact with everyone. "Does anyone see an alternative?" he asked. His expression and tone indicated he was genuinely curious rather than challenging the others to defy his judgment. There were in fact three alternatives as he went around the room, but they were all conveniently within reach of Sanctuary. Gnan considered all of them thoughtfully for a long time.

"Maybe we should consider where the other clans are," Levran suggested.

"We can't use the net," Cark said firmly. "If that human can contact us, he can monitor our inquiries."

"Yes but we don't need to tell them about our target," Gnan said. "I need to find out if the others are on the way to Dafli in any case."

Gnan motioned to Cark, and the Master Tracker sent out the inquiry. The hologram lit up with hundreds of targets each with a spindly tail of telemetry. Cark frowned. "Inio and Safwan have abandoned the meeting."

"Are they heading for Sanctuary?" Gnan asked.

"They're moving to intercept those small craft," Cark said. He studied the telemetry of the ships before clapping his hands decisively. "Cabrillo will know about this before we have a chance to intercept them."

"Then we must move in ourselves before Inio claims all the trophies and Safwan takes all the credit," Gnan said. "We go to Sanctuary."

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**USS _Constantine_: Near nebula RT11002**

Newly promoted Rear Admiral Howard James "Ward" Jones was not a happy man. To be sure he was satisfied with the two stripes on his cuffs, and the fit of the uniform suited his thin frame. Nobody had ever accused him of meager ambition. Even now he was thinking ahead to the third stripe on his uniform cuffs, and the command he wanted above all: SCE's prestigious Utopia Planitia back on Mars. The position offered a lushly appointed villa on the French Riviera, and free run of any ship he wished to command. That the position required him to be an engineer was a detail he was confident could be sidestepped.

Which was beside the point: he was not happy.

Jones was a man of rigid habits. He insisted on a tight schedule for his daily routine which included a half-hour nap after lunch. His weekly agenda never wavered right down to the minute. He insisted his officers keep impeccable uniforms at all times. Once when his hemsman had gained five pounds by working out, Jones had insisted he lose the bulk in his shoulders, "To set the proper example." Jones couldn't bring himself to say what really bothered him about the affair: the man's added muscle mass disfigured a perfect uniform.

Jones hated change. It frightened him though he wouldn't admit it. Why such a man would want a career in Starfleet mystified his contemporaries. He saw his role as that of a lawman keeping the peace. Section 31 had recruited him on that basis.

The rumors circulating about the "mischief" (as he thought of it) aboard the _Constantine_ were not exaggerations. Indeed what he allowed to be known about the mutiny paled in comparison to the truth. The mutiny had surprised Jones, but he'd cracked down on it with vicious abandon driven by his unreasoning fear of change. Not only had he executed the leaders of the mutiny, he'd executed _all_ the mutineers. Ninety members of his crew had died by the time he felt secure in his command of the ship again. He almost killed another ten just to round out the figure. In the restructuring of his command after the "mischief" he drew inspiration from the ancient Royal Navy. He moved the quarters for his Marines next to his own so that anyone trying to capture him had to run a gauntlet of fighting men to do it. He insisted officers socialize only with officers and segregated the enlisted crewman to the bowels of the ship. He imposed a strict decorum for his officers, and harsh punishment for everyone else. He'd even revived the practice of flogging.

As archaic as it all sounded, it was working. His crew was working at peak efficiency. He took it as a sign of high morale. He'd begun to notice a certain aggressive streak in his officers. They were finding more and more lapses in the crew and were persecuting them with relish. Others would consider the system barbaric. Jones could only point out this structure was precisely the one that had triumphed at Trafalgar. He'd even taken the step of researching Admiral Nelson in some detail. He found the new (or rather the old) ways comforting. They were simple and thereby gained elegance in their symmetry.

What made Rear Admiral Jones unhappy today was not his crew. _USS Constantine_ herself had betrayed him instead. "How often can we expect this to happen?" he asked his chief engineer stiffly.

The man stood at rigid attention before the Admiral's chair answered with brisk authority even though he failed to produce a satisfying resolution. "That's something I can't answer with certainty, Admiral." Jones had made it clear he was to be addressed in this manner.

"Do you have a remedy in mind?" Jones asked.

The engineer nodded, caught himself, and returned to his rigid posture. "Find a place to hide and shut down the cloaking device for repairs," he said.

Jones scowled. "That is a request beyond your section, Commander."

The engineer continued to stare at the space over Jones's head. He could tell the man was struggling to refrain from blurting a protest.

"Request denied," Jones finally decided. "We have our orders to return to the Alpha Quadrant with all due haste. You'll have to repair the cloaking device while it is operating."

"Aye-aye, Admiral," the man said.

"Dismissed," Jones said.

The engineer marched off the bridge.

Newly promoted Captain Melissa Schubert spoke up once he was gone. "I should look in on the data we're receiving from the Hirogen net, Admiral."

Jones felt a flash of annoyance. "You'll receive a report from them at 1600 hours, Captain."

"It doesn't hurt to be thorough, sir. The breaks in the cloaking device may have alerted them to our presence."

Jones didn't want to think about it. If the Hirogen did detect the _Constantine_, there would be an unsettling disturbance to his routine. Besides, the Hunters were nowhere in sight. If they did appear, Jones was confident they could either elude or destroy any ship that happened by. The episode might not even slow him down. "Your concern is duly noted," he said stiffly. "Continue your duties at your post, Captain." He glanced at his watch and saw it was time for his weekly inspection of the main armament. He stood and the crewmen jumped to attention. "If there's anything out of the ordinary, let me know."

He made his way towards the drive section of the ship flanked by four Marines. The crew down here knew his routine just as well as he did. They stood ready at their posts awaiting him.

The main armament of the _Constantine_ was certainly impressive to look at. The type 606 phaser cannon was the largest single system ever made for a fighting starship. Fully two thirds of the ship's length was required to hold the cannon and the diameter of the emitter took sixteen people with their arms outstretched to encircle. The device gleamed like polished brass under the lights. Jones wondered if he'd ever get the chance to use the thing. The irony of the type 606 was that standard phasers and torpedoes had a range twice that of this weapon. The cloaking device the _Constantine_ had was meant to allow the ship to sneak up on an unsuspecting opponent so that she could destroy them at a single stroke with this almighty war hammer. Instead Section 31 had used the _Constantine _for marathon sessions of stealth.

Jones was thoughtfully strolling about the cannon when it did something he'd never seen before: it fired. With an unpleasant buzzing CRACK the 606 phaser cannon processed an unimaginable amount of energy. The noise was so loud it took his breath away and left his ears ringing. An instant later the deck under his feet shuddered and a red alert sounded. The crew stared at the cannon in stunned surprise for a full minute before any of them decided they should tend to their posts. Under normal circumstances Admiral Jones would have flogged all of them, but instead he simply stared dumbfounded at the cannon until it fired again. The concussion from the second shot was more powerful than the first since the emitter was getting hotter. A visible wave of air knocked Jones off his feet as the 606 CRACK'ed off another blast.

He scrambled to his feet and brushed off his uniform in time to have the deck heave under him again. He managed to find a handhold, and at last his mind processed what a less regimented brain would have allowed three minutes before. He motioned to his Marine detail and he marched back to the bridge. His rage boiled ever hotter as he realized his itinerary for the day was ruined.

The Hirogen were many things, but they were no fools. The first glimpse they had of the _Constantine_ was enough to convince them they would need all the ships they could muster to bring her down. Ships and clans willing to participate in a hunt were not hard to find, but they were scattered across the 3KPC arm like chaff to the wind. The temptation to rally everyone using the net had been second nature, but the hunters quickly reasoned it was not to be trusted. The recent tampering could only mean they would give their position away before they had their prey cornered. Consequently, they relied on shorter range communications that spread to the farthest ships slower than usual. The result, to their minds, was chaotic.

The _Constantine_ was traveling at warp near a dark nebula. As she raced along next to it she tried and failed to pierce its interior with her sensors. The gasses inside the nebula were very thin and not even close to the embryonic stage of star formation. The swirling dust cloud didn't even catch the light of the surrounding stars. It acted as a perfect blind. The _Constantine_ had a crude Transwarp drive, but it could only operate beyond the influence of gravity. The nebula had enough pull to effectively neutralize the drive to a point several hours away. That hadn't bothered Admiral Jones at the time. His navigator was picking the shortest route back to the Alpha quadrant and a stint at warp was acceptable.

The Hirogen ships gathered quietly on the opposite side of the nebula. With their net and their superior sensors, they caught the intermittent appearances of the _Constantine_ as her cloaking device faltered. Had Admiral Jones ordered the cloaking device dropped for repair, the improvement in his sensor coverage might have been enough to discover the warp trails converging on the opposite side of the nebula. Instead the Hirogen managed to slip into the nebula undetected. About a dozen ships in all were in the first wave. Another twenty were closing in, and another fifty were a few hours out. In all 1,500 hunters had answered the call, by far the largest gathering of Hirogen might in centuries.

Carefully they watched their sensors from the repose of the stardust. The crews spoke in whispers to one another as if the approaching prey could overhear them and might start away from the trap they were strolling into. They could see the faint wisps of the warp trail that led to an empty point in space. They could detect something massive within a space about 9,000 kilometers across. The Federation engineers who designed the cloaking device in the first place would have thrown childish temper tantrums if they knew their "perfect" cloak could be detected at even that much. It mattered little to the Hirogen. Not even their combined firepower could guarantee a hit in a space that wide. It was like hunting for a bubble in a rushing river. It could be found, but finding it was more a matter of luck than skill.

They waited for most of the morning before luck abandoned _USS Constantine_. All it took was a brief flicker in her cloaking device. As fate would have it, she appeared directly under the sights of one of the Hirogen ships. The ship fired instantly. Before her weapons landed against the dreadnoughts powerful shields, the Hirogen ship was destroyed.

Captain Schubert had the good fortune to have impeccable reflexes and the additional luck to be looking in the right place when the Hirogen ships fired the first salvo. "Full spread phasers NOW!" she barked.

The phaser cannon ripped through space like a thin, blue needle. It tore through the Hirogen shields, pierced the hull, raced through the ship, and passed out the other side without so much as slowing down.

The explosion backlit the other Hirogen craft. The shocking sight of eleven hunter ships so close snapped Schubert into action. "Shields up FULL! Target everything in sight!" she shrieked. Just as she saw the weapon's officer bring the tactical display up on the main viewer, the first Hirogen shots bounced harmlessly off the shields with a dull boom. Even with the powerful weapons held bare meters away from the _Constantine_'s hull, the mighty ship scarcely trembled under the onslaught.

The Hirogen darted back into the dust spitting warheads in their wake. For an instant the nebula was quiet. The expanding bloom of the destroyed Hirogen warp core cast a dirty red light across the smoky space. The Hirogen warheads bloomed against the dreadnought's shields like snowballs thrown against a wall a moment later. The _Constantine_ stoically absorbed the punishment as she searched for targets.

The dreadnought vanished again as her cloaking device managed to flicker back to life. "Cloak back online," the science officer said. Her voice had risen at least two octaves in her excitement, and she clenched at her station as if the whole mess would pop out of the bulkhead at any moment.

Schubert saw in an instant the other woman's near panic. Melissa wasn't far behind on her way to hysteria. However, the frenetic state of mind she was in made her revert to training. Ordinarily she might have reverted to her former role and defer judgment to Jones, but she was too surprised, excited, and frightened to think through that process. Instead she started barking out orders in response to any report given her. "Helm, get us out of here!" she snapped reflexively.

Before that could happen, more Hirogen appeared out of the dust and unloaded into the empty spot where the _Constantine_ had been only seconds before. None of the weapons hit their target, but the concussion from their warheads overloaded the dreadnought's cloaking device for good. The singularity inside the device wavered, collapsed, and consumed all the energy that powered the cloak with it. Romulans had vast experience with this condition. Any Romulan engineer who allowed it to happen on his ship was tossed into space summarily. The bulk of the _Constantine_ would never vanish again from view, but there were other consequences she was only now discovering.

Maintaining a singularity means keeping the crushing force of gravity in check inside a very confined volume. Freed from the draw of the singularity, gravity seeks equilibrium with the surrounding space. There was no way, and no time, to compensate for the backlash of the collapse. The spin of the singularity imparted its inertia to the device around it causing enormous torque. The cloaking device inside the _Constantine_ snapped off its mounts and raced through the surrounding compartments like a rifle bullet through a Kleenex. It plunged through the bulkheads directly ahead of it tearing power conduits, breaking down bulkheads, and crushing anyone hapless enough to be nearby. It emerged from the hull directly under the main deflector dish, shattering it like a picture window. Nanoseconds later it winked out of existence, crushed by its own momentum.

The destruction back on the _Constantine_ wasn't over yet. The gaping hole in the hull was two meters across and the pressurized air inside the ship exploded out of it with the force of tons of air carrying more tons of debris torn lose from the internal fittings. The hole widened. Seconds later containment fields slammed down to stop the damage, but they faltered as a cascade of new ailments struck the dreadnought.

Captain Schubert hadn't ordered the helm to drop out of warp before the cloaking device collapsed. When the main deflector went off line, the warp field around the ship distended into an inverted cone. Safety routines inside the warp drive automatically shut down the warp drive before the ship inadvertently snapped in two. The emergency shutdown unfortunately found one of the three warp cores, B drive, at the peak of its output. With no way to disperse the energy, the core started to overload. The pressure inside B drive rapidly escalated to the rupture point. Another automated routine disconnected B drive from the other two and ejected the twenty-story cylinder out the belly of the _Constantine_. The core didn't explode as anyone aboard might have expected. Instead it ruptured its output lines on the far ends of the cylindrical body and began to spew energy like a massive sparkler. It began to spin slowly then more rapidly sending wave after wave of radiation in all directions. Some of these waves battered the _Constantine_'s shields like a gale in pitched storm. The force of the energy was so great, the mighty ship veered drunkenly away.

Exposed and badly battered, the _Constantine_ dropped out of warp. The domino effect the failure of the cloaking device had inflicted on the ship had never been expected by her designers. Their Romulan counterparts would have laughed fit to split. Imperial ships had been doing this sort of thing for decades at odd intervals, hence the summary execution of any engineer who allowed it to take place. This was the first Federation mishap of this kind.

"We lost something!" the science officer reported in a full-throttle panic.

The Hirogen, sensing the advantage, pushed the attack.

Unfortunately the inexperience Federation engineers had with cloaking devices and singularities didn't extend to the weapons systems. "Kill them!" Schubert shrieked at her weapons officer. The _Constantine_ fired a single volley of phaser fire, cannon fire, disruptor, photon, quantum and plasma torpedo shots almost as an afterthought. The eleven Hirogen ships vanished in a blinding flash.

It took a moment for Captain Melissa Schubert to understand it was over. The shouts of the crew still deafened her as reports of multiple disasters flashed across the boards. The entire battle had lasted barely four minutes. She stared at the main viewer. Stunned and expecting more Hirogen ships to appear at any second, she barely noticed the shouts from the security officer and the damage control teams screaming out of the intercom. She had regained enough of her senses by the time Admiral Jones stepped onto the bridge to wish the man a miserable stint in Hell before her iron self-control stopped her from saying something rash.

"Report!" Jones barked to the tactical officer. The man was too busy to reply. Outraged he turned to Schubert.

She could see already he'd require several minutes to digest what she had to tell him. She didn't even have the full picture herself yet. The damage to the ship was too extensive to catalog without hours of work. She tried to frame her words in a way he could understand and turned back to the main viewer. Something was bothering her there. She stared at the main viewer for another heartbeat before it dawned on her. She'd never seen explosions like the Hirogen ships before. Instead of dissipating, they bloomed wider and brighter like supernova. In addition the ejected warp core was rapidly heating up the dust around it into something equally visible. As a result the dozen Hirogen ships were lighting up the dark nebula like spotlights on their position. The spectacle was beautiful to behold, a dazzling play of light and texture against the swirling dust. On any other occasion she would have stared spellbound at the show in pleasant reflection.

"Helm!" she shouted. "Get us away from those plumes before half the Hirogen in the Quadrant arrive!"

"Belay that order!" Jones snapped.

The Admiral was instantly obeyed. Schubert wanted to scream at the man. At the moment the tactician in her knew she had to run and hide if she expected to live another day. She whirled on Warren and leveled a finger angrily at the arrogant son of a bitch. "Get off my bridge, Admiral," she ordered.

"This is my command!" Jones protested.

"I-don't-care," Schubert said spelling each word out. She turned to the four Marines flanking Warren. "Secure the Admiral to his quarters."

The four young men wavered. Jones was about to protest again when fresh screams poured out of the intercom from a dying man begging to be saved in one of the smashed compartments below. His face went suddenly blank. "I'll expect a full report before breakfast, Captain," he said. His voice betrayed a lack of any emotion. His hollow mettle lay exposed for his senior officers to see. He marched to his quarters and vanished behind the closed door.

There was a moment of silence on the bridge. The officers cast stunned glances at one another wondering if what had happened had stopped the egotistical maniac that had consumed them all for the past seven years.

Schubert broke the trance first. "Helm?" she said quietly.

The young man nodded and keyed the impulse engines to life.

"Navigation, plot a course out of here," she ordered. "Those hunters will be back soon."

She turned her attention to damage control for the next hour, but gave up trying to make sense of it all. After all this time under Jones's command, there wasn't much spirit left in her.

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_**USS Diocletian**_

Captain Angela Semmes glared at her latest lover impatiently. The young man loomed over her possessively. Tenderly he stroked her hair from her eyes and bent to brush his lips past her ear. Angela would have none of it. She pushed him away and slid out from under him with a self-disgusted grunt. It was her fifth time with this boy and she was rapidly growing weary of his after-sex habits. "That's enough!" she snapped and made her way to where her robe hung off her chair. She donned the terrycloth quickly before sitting down. She didn't want to look at him.

"What's wrong?" the boy asked. He sounded genuinely injured by her cold shoulder.

Angela felt a smug wave of satisfaction. "Leave me!" she ordered.

The boy was bewildered, hurt, and vulnerable. He despondently gathered his clothes, and dressed. On his way out the door he tried to kiss her again.

"I said, leave me!" she snapped. The boy left both angry and impotent. Angela loved it almost as much as he hated her need for the boy.

When he was gone she bathed the stench of him off of her and out of her. Of all the things this sport generated, the mess was the most disgusting. Still she knew she couldn't do without a little sex now and then. The ancients had a phrase "The Seven Year Itch" that pretty much summed it up for her. Sex really was like an itch. Refusing to scratch it only made relief all the more delicious though she doubted she could tolerate seven years without it. At the same time she hated her need. After all, this was a very intimate act no matter how you sliced it and she hated intimacy. Intimacy denied her the absolute control she craved.

Despite being a lovely woman by any standard and despite the pains she took to enhance her beauty, sex held little appeal to Angela. Intimacy was a weapon she could use against the self-esteem of others. No more. Gratification for her came in the form of dashing the euphoria of her partners. She could draw out the experience by being unresponsive, demanding, snippy, and intolerant. She wanted to dominate her lovers, dominate her body, and never gave an inch of control in bed. Unfortunately her anatomy required she receive rather than give. Had she been a man she might have been of more moderate tastes, but as it was she had to be creative. It only meant she had to play more head games in the short run, but those could be frustrating after a while. The concept of a soul-mate with whom she could share an enduring attachment brought a dismissive laugh to her throat. She wasn't so foolish as to believe her proclivities could be shared with another.

Take the boy she'd just dismissed for example. The decision process to take him had lasted all of fifteen seconds. That decision was based not on his anatomy or his physical appearance, but by his manner. She could tell there was a fierce pride under his professional calm. She wanted to take that from him. Foreplay had consisted of disrobing and lying down. There was the humiliating step of spreading her legs apart so that the boy could have access to her. For reasons she didn't understand and therefore loathed, her body responded well to intercourse. The pleasant sensations buzzing through her loins during the act could usually make her mind drift to peaceful thoughts. She studiously refused to be vocal during the act. If she did, she'd be giving sharp instructions. It was a turn-off few men could stand. The ultimate experience for her was to upset her lover so badly he became impotent. She was getting good at it. After the act was done, she pushed the boy off her and dismissed him. The whole process could take ten minutes to several hours depending on how determined the prospective lover was. She preferred the shorter stints in bed since that meant she'd utterly dashed her partner's self-esteem.

The com on her desk chirped interrupting her reverie. "Incoming message from the _Constantine_, Captain."

"Patch it through," she ordered.

The face that appeared on her monitor was different from the man she'd remembered. Aside from the Admiral's uniform, Ward Jones was looking paler and thinner than when she last saw him. Lines of strain fanned around his eyes. Embryonic jowls dangled from his cheeks and jaw. His eyes had gained a soft expression she didn't care for. _Always knew the man was a flake, but does he have to show it off?_ She thought with a disgusted sniff.

"You look well, Captain," Jones said with a refined, oddly accented voice. Where had he picked that up? The man hailed from Illinois, but the odd clip to his words made him sound British.

"It's been a while," she said then added, "Admiral."

Jones smiled. "Six years has changed a few things in my favor."

Semmes tried not to grind her teeth in outrage. How dare he _condescend_ to her? The moron never could think on his feet. He was a fine planner, but once his plans started to break down he lacked the imagination to adapt. Luckily for him most of his plans were good ones. "I suppose congratulations are in order," she said with a humor she didn't feel.

Jones' smile turned smug. "It's not like I have much to work with out here," he said trying to sound sage. Semmes struggled not to roll her eyes. "The more I find out about what we're facing out here the more I wish they'd picked someone else for the job."

_Then why did they pick you in the first place, shithead?_ Semmes thought with rising anger. "I'll admit you're not my first choice, but you'll do," she said cheerfully.

Jones laughed. "We're all our own favorites for the promotion list, Angela." At least he wasn't so foolish as to think she was happy about being passed over.

"How are the others taking the news?" she asked.

"Well enough," he allowed with a hint of disappointment. She suspected some of the others in the squadron had a few choice things to say to him he hadn't cared for in the slightest. Captain Nugyen Xuan of the USS _Hadrian_ was known to be rampantly ambitious and he wasn't shy about telling anyone who cared to listen about it. "I'd tell you more about it, but I need you to abandon your current objectives and come here."

Angela was genuinely surprised. "Really? Why?"

"Our cloaking device broke down yesterday during a battle with the Hirogen," Jones explained. "Our tranwarp drive is inoperable, and our warp drive will be limited to warp 7 once we get it online again."

Semmes felt a smug smile drift over her face. "That's quite a lot of damage, Admiral," she said.

Jones set his jaw. "I never had a chance to explain my orders from Grinnell before this happened, Captain. We've been ordered back to the Alpha quadrant."

"I take it the Dominion war is not going well," she said.

"The tactical situation is degenerating rapidly," Jones admitted. "I shouldn't have to explain what our presence will mean to the war effort."

"What about _Pioneer_?" Semmes asked. "We can't let Koon get away."

Jones tuned thoughtful. "How close are you to finding him?"

"Give me two weeks and permission to fire when I find them, and I'll have that objective cleared," Semmes said confidently.

Jones' expression darkened as he considered her request. He scrolled through lists of data on another screen before nodding. "Approved, but not one minute more, understood?"

"Aye, sir," Semmes replied.

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**USS _Constantine_**

"So?" Schubert asked curtly.

"I gave Semmes two weeks to find _Pioneer_," Jones said meekly. "Captain Sassak and the _Nero_ should arrive sometime today to give us a tow."

"What about the others?" Schubert demanded.

"They should start arriving the day after tomorrow," Jones said.

Schubert nodded. She'd decided to let Jones believe he was in charge. He wasn't, not in any real sense did he command the _Constantine_ anymore. He'd lost the test of nerve against her when he'd ducked into his quarters earlier instead of taking charge of the situation. She knew she was treading on dangerous ground by proceeding along these lines, but there was no helping it.

Melissa knew Jones had a first-rate intellect. He'd graduated first in his class at the Academy and never let anyone forget it. His work reflected his ponderous thinking. He enjoyed tackling new projects and sorting out details. He maintained the studious attitude of the puzzle solver. In ages past the man would have been consumed by crosswords, jig-saws, mind games, and riddles. Presently he had an ongoing obsession with behavioral science that had resulted in the mutiny and the draconian code of conduct aboard her ship. The man had the knowledge and the skills to work wonders so long as he had the orderly time and setting to do so. However, the events of earlier today had shown a fatal flaw. In the chaotic exchange of battle, the man lacked the force of character to inspire.

Fortunately for Jones he'd created something well suited to the task at hand. The crew of the _Constantine_ had been exposed to heretofore unimaginable brutality for the sake of Jones' stringent discipline. Every one of the crew had been raised on a more "enlightened" standard stressing civility and humanity. After a few months of daily flogging and the summary execution of a sizable fraction of the crew, everyone was well attuned to violence. It was much like the old saying "familiarity breeds contempt." Pain no longer frightened them. Inflicting agony on others no longer troubled the refined conscience drummed into them since childhood. Jones had expanded their emotional ability to cope with horror, and instilled a fierce aggression in everyone including Captain Melissa Schubert. Somehow Jones had left himself out of the equation.

It amazed Melissa to realize just how out of touch Jones was. He ignored the steely glares of hatred shot at him all across the ship. He missed the snide comments in the corridors. He blithely ignored her warnings that the crew were about to do something drastic again if he didn't relent a little and allow the crew to relax.

At least she understood her crew. After all she sympathized with them.

"The _Nero_ should be here around noon tomorrow. The _Caligula_ should arrive around three in the morning after that," Jones explained.

"We'll need a tow back to Starbase 113," Melissa pointed out. "Did you explain that to them?"

"I figured the _Nero_ should do nicely for the job," Jones reasoned. "She has the most powerful Transwarp drive of any of us."

Melissa had to agree he had a point. USS _Nero_ had been a high-speed demonstrator and as such had a very elaborate, very powerful tranwarp drive. It was believed at the time of her construction that the added power would add up to a faster design, but she was only marginally faster than all of her sisters. The top speed of the _Caesar_-class was around Transwarp 2. The top speed of the _Nero_ was Transwarp 2.12. In terms of warp drives the speed was the equivalent of warp 31, but it fell far short of the targeted Transwarp 5 everyone had expected. It was a frustrating development for the designers back home, but the crew of the _Nero_ soon found a way to put all the added Transwarp power to good use. They soon discovered they could haul immense loads through their Transwarp conduits, roughly five times the mass her sisters could sustain. While her designers balked at the notion of turning the ship into, "The largest, most elaborate, most expensive tugboat in history," as one man put it derisively, Section 31 thought the craft had its uses. One of its first missions was to spirit away debris from the Wolf 359 battlefield. This included large segments of the Borg Cube that had been shot off during the fighting. With her large hangars and ability to drag massive objects through transwarp, the _Nero_ was one of the more useful covert platforms Section 31 had at its disposal. A framed picture of the _Glomar Explorer_ hung over Captain Sassak's stateroom desk as a sort of tongue-and-cheek admission of what the _Nero_ did for a living.

While it would solve many problems when the _Nero_ arrived, Melissa was still worried about the hours she would have to weather alone. She glanced at a tactical display on the armrest of her chair. She'd ordered a full spread of probes launched once the fighting stopped. The probes launched without a hitch, but unfortunately the subspace receivers aboard the _Constantine_ had been damaged in the fighting. By the time they managed to fix the problem, the probes had vanished, probably lost when the guidance from the ship failed. She tried to launch a second set of probes, but one exploded in the torpedo tube killing three crewmen and one officer. The rest of the ordinance was being inspected. With the cloak down, the _Constantine_ had an impressive view of the space around her, but the probes would have extended their line of sight around the dark nebula they were skirting.

Their current top speed was still limited to the impulse drive. The warp engines were badly out of phase with only two cores to power it. The chief engineer assured Melissa that any attempt to jump to warp would result in one of the two cores overloading and being dumped just like the one they'd lost. The problem could be resolved, but it would take about a week to re-phase the engines. There was the additional problem of replacing the main deflector dish. That chore would be finished by the end of the day, but until then it limited their top speed to about one-half impulse.

Melissa stared thoughtfully at the main viewer. The image on it was dead astern. The dozen Hirogen ships were still exploding in spectacular fashion. They looked like oddly shaped flowers of incandescent blue and white. Where their boundaries reached the damaged and spinning warp core from the _Constantine_, there was a smoky cloud of red gas the churned like the wake of a steamship. They were still close enough for the light of these distant explosions to tinge the hull of the _Constantine_ a silvery blue. While the ship was safe from the radiation, Melissa still thought they were entirely too close to "the scene of the crime" so to speak.

They'd been in a minor scuffle, and yet they were limping away from it in plain sight. They would remain in full view of the carnage until the _Nero_ arrived. They were also partially blinded. The far side of the dark nebula could still hide Hirogen ships arriving in the area. If the hunters were smart, they'd move for cover until a larger fleet of ships could gather. Melissa had few doubts they would do precisely that.

"I'm wondering what you intend to do about hiding us, Captain," Jones said.

Melissa shot an angry glare at the man. "Running comes to mind, Admiral," she snapped.

Jones recoiled as if slapped. "No need to be rude," he said evenly.

Melissa was about to vent her spleen at the man when a blip appeared on the tactical screen. "Mr. Bittu!" she barked at her tactical officer.

"I see them," Commander Ibrahim Bittu said evenly. "They're on the fringe of the nebula."

"Don't lose them!" Schubert warned.

"Tracking," Bittu murmured. "Tracking…"

"Can we target them?" Schubert asked.

"Quantum torpedo launcher is damaged. We can't guide a photon torpedo that far without a class 7 probe between us and them," the weapons officer explained.

"Launch a probe and a full spread of torpedoes," Shubert ordered. It was a risk she knew, but they did have a few probes inspected.

"We're working on it," the weapons officer said.

"Explain yourself!" Jones shouted. "Why can't you carry out those orders immediately?"

The weapons officer turned to face the Admiral. "Because we've unloaded the torpedo racks to inspect the ordinance, sir," he said cooly. "The probes and the torpedoes will have to be manhandled into the tubes. If you can lift two and a half tons by yourself, get down there and show everyone the trick of it."

Jones reddened in rage. His fists shook at his sides as he stared at the insolent man. He looked ready to lunge at the man's throat, but instead he looked to Schubert for help. Melissa ignored him.

An instant later there was a beep on the weapons officer's console. He turned around and keyed in the command. A faint, dull thud told everyone aboard there had been a launch. "Guiding," the WO said.

"We're losing the sight picture," Bittu warned. "They're moving for cover."

"I need more separation for the torpedoes to guide," the WO explained. "Give me twenty seconds."

"Fire the torpedoes," Jones ordered.

"I advise against it," the WO said. "It'll take us twenty minutes to load the tubes by hand again."

"Fire the torpedoes!" Jones repeated.

The WO turned to Schubert for confirmation. She shook her head. He turned around and studied his instruments, "Ten seconds."

"They're gone," Bittu announced. "They ducked into the nebula."

"Will the probe be able to find them?" Schubert asked.

Bittu was about to answer when his expression darkened. "I don't think so," he said and shifted the main viewer to another image of the probe. A thin white line of energy lanced out of the cloud and vaporized the probe.

"I see you have everything in hand, Captain," Jones said. "I'll be in my quarters." He turned and left.

Melissa was glad to have him gone. "Do we have any cloaked probes available?" she asked the WO.

The man shook his head. "They take longer to inspect. I've been putting those off until last."

"Give me three as soon as you can," she ordered. "About how long will it take to have them ready?"

The WO nodded. "Ninety minutes, give-or-take. Do you want them launched all at once or should I fire them as soon as each is ready?"

"Why so long?" she asked.

Bittu waved at Jones' door. "The purges," he said. "We had five people qualified on the diagnostics when all this started this morning. We're down to one. The other fifteen… well…"

"Understood," Schubert said crisply. She didn't want to dwell on the mutiny. Not now. "Launch each probe as it becomes ready."

"Aye, sir," both men said.

For the next several hours they watched Hirogen ships dart tantalizingly out of their reach. Melissa suspected they were testing her limits. The cloaked probes did expand their vision around them, but there were still blind spots all across the region.

The science officer managed to compile a more complete tactical map around them and Melissa wasn't pleased. The area around them was littered with dust. The same dust that made up the dark nebula. Sensors could only penetrate so far before their effectiveness simply petered out. The display denoting it all resembled a heavily polluted lake with drifting debris scattered randomly across a wide area. To complicate things, the exploding ships were casting radiant energy onto the dust. This in and of itself wasn't all that alarming, but the resulting glare further blinded the _Constantine_'s sensors. It was like shining a bright light into a dense fog where the sensors tried to probe deeply into the soupy mess.

Hour by hour the tension both eased and tightened by degrees. On the one hand they were repairing the damage to the ship. On the other hand they were catching fleeting glimpses of Hirogen ships. Nobody doubted the hunters were gathering for the kill. It took ten hours of excruciating anxiety to plod along at half impulse while the main deflector was repaired. Melissa expected the Hirogen to strike once they were running at full impulse, but the dust remained dark and settled. The torpedo tubes were repaired shortly after that and the inspection of the ordinance was completed about an hour later.

That left the casualties and the bulk of the damage caused by the cloaking device itself. The hole left in the hull by the device had eventually widened to a gash five meters across with a nasty tear along the pressure hull fifteen meters long. It was manageable but the damage underneath was exponentially worse. Crewmen were missing. It was assumed they'd been shot out into space during the explosive decompression. _At least they didn't suffer_, Melissa thought distantly. Between the hole in the hull and main engineering was a shredded mass of bulkheads, conduits, deck plates, consoles, and assorted smears of color here and there where some unfortunate soul had been crushed and carried away. Counted among the missing were engineers, scientists, two doctors, and every single one of the computer core specialists. Melissa hoped she could recruit a few off the _Nero_ once it arrived.

Schubert watched the clock count down to the appointed time when their sister ship arrived.

Bittu noticed her glancing at the clock for the fifth time in just as many minutes and managed an amused snort. "Nervous, Captain?"

"I have every right to be," Schubert said absently. "Do you think we'll be seeing them in this soup?"

"Hard to say," Bittu admitted. "We're having a hard enough time as it is."

He watched the clock thoughtfully for a minute before scanning his instruments again. "Anytime now. We should see them once they come within hailing distance."

Schubert watched the clock count down to the appointed time. She watched it continue to scroll onward for a full ten minutes afterward in silent concentration before turning to Bittu. Her new first officer shook his head at the unspoken question. She sighed. She turned around and hung her head. Tears threatened. She hated feeling so vulnerable.

"Enough of this!" she declared. "Red alert. Power up all weapons. Let's flush those hunters out of their blinds before there are too many of them. Weapons, fire the nebula."

The technical term for what she proposed was called "fusion acceleration." There was even a section of the tactical manual devoted to this sort of operation along with a strict ethical prohibition against using such a tactic. To the tired, abused, and misused crew of the _Constantine_, the ethics of what they were being ordered to do scarcely mattered anymore. Survival was the key to everyone aboard, and pragmatism went hand-in-hand with that sacred duty.

The _Constantine_'s warp nacelles started to glow brighter and thin blue clouds of hydrogen began to gather about the ship. It pumped out this volatile gas in a lethal concentration to a point just beyond the mighty shields that had protected her from the Hirogen so well just a few hours before. The weapons officer then shifted the polarity of the shields so that the hydrogen was attracted back down towards the ship. Where the gas met the shields it stopped creating a thick layer of pure hydrogen around the ship, and still the _Constantine_ continued to pump out more. Soon the concentration and pressure was enough to compress the hydrogen into a liquid between the force of the attraction to the shields and the stolid barrier those shields formed. Three seconds later the dreadnought was enfolded in a brilliant white light. It was spherical in shape and began to expand slowly. The pressure had been so great the liquid had managed to ignite an almost perfect fusion reaction. As it encountered the dust of the nebula, the sphere consumed it and converted it into more energy. Rarely had anyone tried this before, but even then it wasn't hard to accomplish. Fusion on this scale was possible so long as the reaction was sustained by enough fuel. As the sphere expanded, it started to accelerate its pace. Soon it was marching away from its origin by half the speed of light and casting off a massive pressure wave ahead of it.

Within minutes, the _Constantine_ was surrounded by empty space. She still fed the expanding, hollow star she'd created with thick clouds of hydrogen from her reactors, but the dust had been swept away as though before a massive broom.

Before long, ships started to appear. The Hirogen had managed to weather the shockwave and the fusion layer in fairly good order. They appeared out of the white light like startled vultures defending a carcass. They wasted no time attuning themselves to their new circumstances. Once they appeared, they opened fire.

"Incoming," Bittu announced.

"Evasive!" Schubert ordered. "Return fire! Weapons are free! Fire at will."

Twenty-four Hirogen ships faced off against the _Constantine_. Even with their disadvantage in size and armament, they did have mobility on their side. Their prey could only plod along at impulse. They could jump to warp which most did to avoid being swept aside by the first volley sent their way.

They appeared in formation desperately close to the _Constantine_ starboard side to unload a devastating amount of firepower on the hapless ship. Even with the dreadnought's mighty shields, the mass of impacts caused the ship to veer drunkenly to port.

Schubert saw an immediate opportunity. "Plasma torpedoes! Full spread!" she barked.

Romulan plasma torpedoes were slow, short-ranged, and favored stealth to deliver them to greatest effect. That said, they still packed the heaviest punch of any torpedo the _Constantine_ had. The green specs of light dropped off the rim of the dreadnought's saucer section and charged towards the Hirogen scoring sixteen solid hits. All of those ships were either destroyed outright or crippled beyond repair. The _Constantine_ almost disdainfully dispatched the survivors with the 606.

The hunters scattered again. They appeared once more off the _Constantine_'s fantail and delivered another crushing volley. The shields of the dreadnought held, but her tail was knocked viciously down by the exploding warheads.

The dreadnought unloaded with every phaser she could bring to bear. The red lines lanced out and touched the shields of all twenty-four Hirogen ships. Five of the ships staggered under the punishment. Sensing an advantage, the _Constantine_ focused on these ships for a few seconds more before all of them exploded. Schubert further ordered a few plasma torpedoes detonated in the Hirogen wreckage to disperse their telltale reactor plumes. The rest of the Hirogen scattered again.

The punishment was beginning to tell on the _Constantine_. "Shields down to fifty percent!" Bittu announced in a shocked voice.

"That's impossible!" the science officer blurted. "We have four layers of redundant shielding!"

Schubert made a mental note to remove the science officer from her station on the bridge. The young woman was brilliant, but her nerves were not holding up under combat conditions. Having her panicking on the bridge might induce wider confusion among her officers. Just the same, the science officer had a point. "Rout auxiliary power to the shields," Melissa ordered.

"I've already done that," Bittu explained. "The Hirogen warheads and particle fire is wearing them down at a surprising rate."

The weapons officer let out a groan. "We designed them to withstand Klingon weapons," he said as the answer dawned on him. "We forgot to tune them to Hirogen standards."

"Can we accomplish that now?" Schubert asked.

"No," the weapons officer explained. "That's something we need a space dock for."

"Damn!" Schubert spat. Here she was in the most powerful ship in the fleet, and she was finding out only now that it was obsolete because the designers had built it to win the last war instead of this one.

More Hirogen ships appeared through the fusion wake. They fired off a volley of purple torpedoes before jumping back to warp. Much to everyone's shock, the warheads raced right through the weakened shields. Since they didn't detonate, the shields ignored them. Once under them, they flashed across the hull and opened like clamshells. They sprinkled a silvery rain of metal strips over the belly of the dreadnought. Each strip was about a hand span long and magnetically attracted to the hull. Once it hit the hull, each strip flashed white-hot as a pulse of energy was sent down it welding the strips to the hull plates.

As the strips started to pelt the hull they made a faint tapping sound like a spider tapping its forelegs on the glass of an aquarium. When they flashed to incandescent life and began to cool, the tapping turned into an eerie scraping noise like the claws of many-legged predator digging through the duratanium to get at the tender flesh beneath.

A series of shrill groans shuddered through the ship followed shortly after by deafening BANGs. As each of the metal strips cooled, it contracted rapidly pinching the hull plates they had bound themselves to along with them. The smooth contours of the _Constantine_'s hull made for perfect media for this work. Already under tension from the internal pressure of the ship, the external torsion on the hull plates made them first buckle then pop off as their seams sheared apart. As they did so, the atmosphere of dreadnought's deck 1 exploded into space with enough force to make the mighty ship buck violently upward a full kilometer. In one fell stroke, the Hirogen had destroyed an entire deck of the ship. Luckily for the crew of the _Constantine_, deck 1 was used mostly for storage. By sheer luck, nobody was hurt.

The Hirogen weapon was called an arachnid warhead. The reason why they hadn't been deterred by the _Constantine_'s shields was because their detonators were magnetic instead of something more complex. Starfleet designers had made the shields to disperse energy, not deter random objects from striking the hull. That was the purpose of the main deflector which was pointing the wrong way to do any good against this kind of weapon.

Schubert wasn't finished. Not by a long shot. "Full impulse 270 degrees vertical!" She ordered.

The _Constantine_ dropped away like meteor into a thin atmosphere. The next wave of Hirogen ships appeared bare seconds later only to find their prey bare kilometers away from them and rushing right at them. They scattered to avoid a collision. Half of them fell under the sights of the 606 phaser cannon. In six blinding shafts of light, six Hirogen ships exploded. The others barely managed to limp away with heavy damage.

Another wave of the hunters arrived and unloaded more of the arachnid warheads. Bittu would have none of it. "Target phasers on those warheads!" he barked.

With casual precision, the red lines of energy lanced out to the purple points of light and wiped them out.

Bittu wasn't finished. "Target quantum torpedoes on those ships. Reel them in!"

The quantum torpedoes popped out of the launchers and jumped to warp. The Hirogen were stopped cold by the onslaught as if they had run headlong into a wall. Their warp drives were shattered, and they had no choice but to turn around and face their wounded prey.

"Bring us about," Schubert ordered. "Charge them!" The _Constantine_ settled out and swung around to face her attackers head-on. Twenty Hirogen ships took the challenge and raced for her firing white beams of fusion energy and warhead as they went.

The _Constantine_'s phasers danced madly about the incoming warheads while she pumped out every kind of torpedo she could muster. It was a mad jousting game set on a grand scale.

The Hirogen increased their rate of fire until the space between them and the _Constantine_ was almost a solid curtain of warheads, white rays of fusion, red lines of phaser fire, and the occasional brilliant white flash of the 606. The onslaught was beginning to tell on their quarry. The first chinks in the _Constantine_'s shields had finally opened up allowing some of their shots to yield damage. One shot tore away the portside turbolift tube on the drive stem. Another shot tore away the Captain's yacht on the bottom of the saucer section with an accompanying explosion that gouged a hole three decks deep and two meters across. Another shot shattered the buzzard scoop off the starboard nacelle. And one warhead managed to fly right into the forward hangar destroying everything and everyone inside it.

Melissa found herself caught up in a full-throated scream as she watched the Hirogen race for her. Others around the bridge took up the war cry.

The 606 fired about once a second. From her perch in the bridge, the din of the weapon sounded like dull clangs above the din of dull and distant explosions and the frenzied commands of her officers. The steady, unhurried rate of fire was maddening to Melissa. She felt a primal urge to stand up and throw something heavy and devastating against the Hirogen on the main viewer, and in doing so wipe them away in one almighty flash. Instead the 606 plodded along shot after shot, erasing the Hirogen one at a time.

Much to her surprise and relief, the main deflector made short work of the purple arachnid warheads crushing them with their own momentum against the steady force of the deflector spike sprinting along ahead of the dreadnought across an area thirty kilometers in diameter.

The 606 pumped out shot after shot, popping the Hirogen ships like balloons filled with gasoline. The quantum torpedoes punched the Hirogen hard, knocking them aside like a hard blow from a boxer. Photon torpedoes fountained out of the launchers and wore down the Hirogen into nothing in about twenty hits each. And still they kept coming. The last six were fifty kilometers away when the photon torpedo launcher fell silent along with the quantum torpedo launcher.

"Hard to starboard!" Schubert ordered. The _Constantine_ laboriously heaved her bulk away from the Hirogen. The frame of the massive ship groaned mightily under the strain and the personnel in the lower decks saw the floors bulkheads and ceilings slowly flex and distend like taffy. The _Constantine_ had more than enough power to manage the sharp turn. To her Hirogen assailants she looked as though she had pivoted as if on a hinge. Unfortunately her frame was severely overstressed from the turn. Dozens of plasma conduits were ripped out of the bulkheads, doorways were crushed, and every corridor and compartment was wrenched out of true form. The crew could only stare in amazement at the ship stretching and tearing itself apart with incredulity. The inertial dampeners were so strong, nobody so much as staggered and kept their feet. "Plasma torpedoes, full spread!" Schubert ordered. Sixteen plasma torpedoes fell out of the launchers right in front of the Hirogen.

The Hirogen ships frantically shot back at the _Constantine_. They were too close to veer off before they ran headlong into the plasma torpedoes and exploded. The shockwaves from the six exploding ships slammed into the _Constantine_ broadside, sending the dreadnought into a rolling spin. She skittered along like that for a thousand kilometers before more Hirogen ships arrived.

By now the expanding fusion wave had all but consumed the dark nebula and was beginning to dissipate. Fifty Hirogen ships appeared out of the darkness and surrounded the tumbling dreadnought from a respectful distance.

"Recover! RECOVER, HELM!" Schubert shrieked.

Slowly the roll stopped. Slowly the spin settled. The _Constantine_ sat motionless for a moment. The hunters watched in awe of their prey. The scattered remains of dozens of ships littered the former dark nebula like splashes of bright color against a black canvas. They had to remind themselves this was only one ship, but it was astonishing to see their clans slaughtered so quickly. In barely ten minutes, the _Constantine_ had killed forty of their brethren ships and over 12,000 Hirogen. And yet she was still ready to fight! For the first time in 2,000 years, the hunters found themselves on the losing end of a confrontation. Even as they watched the mighty ship recover, they saw the stubborn, powerful shields of the _Constantine_ waver, stabilize, and regenerate to full strength. It gave all of them pause.

The standoff might have remained that way for several hours while the Hirogen conferred amongst themselves had the _Nero_ not appeared.

The Transwarp conduit opened right between two Hirogen ships, and the _Nero_ alighted out of it. Captain Sassak had assumed speed was essential and thus had insisted upon arriving as close to the _Constantine_ as possible. Regrettably that meant the cloaking device had to be shut down since the singularity would collapse the Tanswarp conduit prematurely. Sassak was late because of another problem Transwarp travel imposed that was so far not known. Because of the close proximity to the Great Barrier, or more specifically to the quasar at the center of the Milky Way, Transwarp conduits were drawn towards the Great Barrier. It wouldn't have mattered had the _Nero_ transited the area perpendicular to the Great Barrier, but her course had taken her on a shallow tangent instead. Inside the conduit, the navigation sensors were useless and couldn't see the conduit begin to arc away from its intended destination. The longer the _Nero_ maintained the conduit, the further the conduit bent away from where the _Constantine_ was supposed to be. So it was a huge shock when the _Nero_ appeared fifteen light years away from where she was expected to be. It took Sassak and his crew twenty minutes to deduce what had happened and remedy the problem. Hence the _Nero_'s tardy arrival.

She'd barely closed the conduit behind her when she was hit hard across the saucer section by fully sixty arachnid warheads. Her saucer section never had a chance. It snapped off the drive section before it was crumpled like a tin can. The supplementary drives in the saucer section breached as the bulkheads around them came crushing inwards to the tune of screaming metal and terrified men and women. Most of her crew, along with Captain Sassak, was killed instantly.

Her chief engineer was sharp enough to raise the shields of the drive section before the _Nero_'s saucer section exploded.

When it did explode, it made firing the dark nebula look like a minor pop by comparison. The _Caesar_-class had a supplementary drive that rivaled the three warp drives of the main section, but was far more efficient. The reasoning being the saucers were expected to preserve the lives of the crew, not engage in protracted combat. It's demise started when a supporting beam was wrenched free from the bulkheads surrounding the antimatter containment chambers. There were six chambers in all arrayed around the top of a type 3 auxiliary warp core. The beam was blown across the room by the explosive decompression of the compartments on the opposite side of the chamber. Along the way it sliced right through the control lines leading to the warp core. This caused the warp core to go into emergency shutdown and shunted all the antimatter up into the containment chambers. Intended to deal with an operational accident, it had devastating consequences under the Hirogen onslaught. The compartment was still venting the atmosphere and everything not tied down (including bodies) out into space when another arachnid warhead slipped into the gaping hole in the saucer section and opened up inside the compartment. The antimatter containment chambers were immediately coated in the deadly metal chaff and shredded. When the antimatter spilled out of the chambers it reacted to everything it touched in nanoseconds.

The saucer section exploded in the typical three-stage detonation of an antimatter chain-reaction. The space around the saucer section contorted as matter rushed in to react to the antimatter. This created a space-time shockwave that sent every ship within two light years spinning uncontrollably towards the source of the reaction. They were sent hurtling outward again a second later when they slammed into the bright flash of energy generated by the reaction itself. The final stage of the explosion saw the typical formation of a wildly spinning debris field. The debris pelted the hapless ships like needles fired out of a cannon.

This last stage was most significant to the _Nero_'s drive section since it was barely a hundred kilometers away from it. Its shields managed to protect it from the shockwaves, but her main deflector was jostled out of alignment to deter the steel rain. In seconds the duratanium needles shredded the _Nero_'s drive section into Swiss cheese. Her hull was all but peeled off her back and the crew still alive on the decks underneath was turned into hamburger by the debris. Containment fields slammed down across every deck, but this was an automated function. The crew was just seconds dead.

The Hirogen saw an opportunity and took it. As soon as they regained their senses from the shockwaves, they beamed aboard the _Nero_ and scavenged the bodies for trophies. Most simply ripped the heads off the corpses and returned to their ships. Some couldn't find anything remotely recognizable as a body and took the odd artifact for their collection. Rings were highly prized. The hunters knew the _Constantine_ would be on the way soon enough to drive them away so they only spent a few seconds aboard the gutted ship before returning to their own.

One by one, the Hirogen ships shot away into warp until the _Constantine_ was left alone with her dead sister and the flowery blooms of her Hirogen kills.

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**USS _Nero_: Several hours later**

Chief Engineer Albert Kuali was not easily impressed. For starters he was a big man and accustomed to looking down on others from his lofty height. Next he was a strong man and had gained renown among his peers for his ability to toss aside hefty objects with casual ease. Last he had that peculiar brand of callous detachment only the young and inexperienced could command. By temperament he was a stolid, serious man who held few sentiments sacred.

So it was a great shock for everyone to see Kuali staggering about the _Nero's_ decks gagging down bile. Melissa didn't blame him for an instant.

The decks of the _Nero_'s drive section were a scene from Hell. The ship itself was amazingly intact. There were a few plasma conduits breached here and there, but for the most part the damage was limited to a maddening spray of holes through the hull and large plates of the deck and bulkheads. They were maddening because they all dripped a steady rain of blood in several colors. There were shredded bodies everywhere and not one skull to be found among them. The Hirogen had ripped the heads off some of the bodies so violently that their spinal cords had snaked out of their backs leaving massive gashes in what was left of the cadavers.

The stench of the place was overpowering. The bodies hadn't had the time to rot yet, but the smell of blood mixed with excrement and the metallic tang of fear assaulted the olfactory senses with physical force. Melissa's eyes began to water the instant she'd beamed aboard. It would take days to get the taste out of her mouth from breathing the vile brew.

She saw Kuali stagger to a corner and heave a few quarts of his guts onto the deck. The additional stench of the vomit only made her want to puke herself. She managed to bite down the bile and moved up next to the engineer. "You alright, Chief?"

Kuali straightened wiping his chin against the back of his hand. "Sorry, sir," he said in his rumbling basso voice. A hint of his Zulu accent gave a strange sing-song rhythm to his words. He pointed hopelessly to a corpse on the opposite side of the corridor. The hapless fellow had been stripped of his head, spine and hands before being tossed aside. The slimy mass of his entrails slithered out of his back as gas began to gather inside them. It was like red eels, wet and wiggling, slowly inching their way through the man. "That's not something I was expecting to see today."

Melissa managed (barely) to keep her stomach from rebelling. She did it by quickly turning away from the sight and staring at Kuali. "Look at me, Chief," she ordered. To her own ears she sounded close to hysteria. To Kuali she sounded determined. "Look at me and not him."

Kuali obeyed, and Melissa led the large man away from the mess on the deck to a clear section of the corridor. Once there she stared him right in the eye until she was satisfied he was going to be alright. "What about salvaging this?" she asked.

Kuali shook his head. "The hardware's intact, but the deck and bulkheads are shredded. We'd spend months trying to chase down hull breaches and never get all of them."

"Damn!" Melissa muttered. "I was hoping for a quick fix on this matter."

Her plan had been to abandon the shattered drive section of the _Constantine_ and mate the saucer section to what was left of the _Nero_. If all went well she would have a fully-functional _Caesar_-class dreadnought in a few hours by doing so. Sensors indicated that all the systems of the _Nero_'s drive section were operational, but chasing down hull breaches for the next few months and cleaning out the blood for the next few days and weeks made the idea far less attractive. The additional hazard of exposing the larger majority of her crew to the slaughterhouse the _Nero_ had become would demoralize them to a point that outweighed the benefits of the operational gear here. Stripping what she needed would take time she dared not expend for fear the Hirogen would return with enough ships to finish them off, but she saw no way around that. The _Constantine_ was too short on spare parts to discard this opportunity.

"What about the cores?" she asked.

"Haven't been down to Sherwood forest yet, sir," Kuali admitted. Main Engineering in the _Caesar_-class was referred to as "Sherwood Forrest" because of the small grove of warp cores growing through the ship. It was a term borrowed from the old ballistic missile submarines from the Cold War to describe the missile compartments of these grim vessels. The moniker was appropriate even if the setting was entirely different. "Sherwood Forrest" aboard an _Ohio_-class or _Typhoon_-class ballistic missile submarine was a region of the ship kept deathly quiet and largely unoccupied. Main Engineering aboard the _Caesar_-class was filled with people at all times and produced a teeth-rattling din while underway.

"Let's get moving then." She turned to move when one of Kuali's massive black hands slipped over her shoulder and stopped her dead.

"I better go first, Captain," he said. "We can't afford to lose you."

Melissa felt a flash of irritation. "I don't need to be coddled, Chief," she snapped.

Kuali's eyes softened. His other hand slipped over her remaining shoulder and gently squeezed. The only thing she could compare it to was a childhood memory of being hugged by her father when she was four. Those hands all but crushed her. His voice dropped an added octave and rattled her frame right down to her toes. "I need to see it first," he said.

She found herself nodding despite her earlier reservations. "Alright," she stammered. She followed Kuali down through the decks passing the bodies littering the corridors at every turn. She drank up the sights and smells of the mutilated corpses growing angrier by the minute. Kuali on the other hand studiously ignored the carnage and focused on where he was going. _I suppose we have different ways of dealing with this_, she thought before reflecting, _what's going to be the price I'll have to pay before I can put this behind me?_ No doubt it would be a high price indeed.

Faintly she noticed she was still holding Kuali's hand. She tried to retrieve it, but the Chief viciously snatched it back. It was a gesture redolent with fear, and she guessed the big man was maintaining his composure only by the slimmest margins.

They arrived in Main Engineering a few moments later. Gore was everywhere. The compartment was full of personnel at the time of the _Nero's_ demise, and the Hirogen had not spared it. Bodies were tossed about the room like sopping wet dolls. None of them had their heads. What made it tolerable was that Captain Sassak had a largely Vulcan engineering staff. Most of the blood sprayed around the room was green and had an oddly sweet smell. Melissa tried to pin down the odor to something recognizable and finally settled on orange blossoms. With an internal wince she realized too late she'd never be able to smell oranges again without memories of this place coming to mind.

In the center of the compartment were the three warp cores. They stood like obelisks of Egyptian lore majestically presiding over the scene before them. They were pristine. They hummed quietly and indifferently to the horrors around them like the steady rumble of distant thunder. It was as if the Hirogen had sacrificed everyone inside the compartment to the cores like they were religious icons. It was so surreal Melissa forgot what they were here for.

Fortunately Kuali didn't forget their mission and stepped up to the controls. Most of the controls were shredded in the same way the decks and bulkheads were so he retrieved a tricorder and scanned the cores for a few minutes. "They're all working perfectly," he announced.

Melissa had allowed her mind to drift and stared at him uncomprehendingly.

Kuali patiently repeated himself and added, "We could take the B drive out of here and install it aboard the _Constantine_ in twenty minutes, sir."

"Get started," Melissa ordered. "I'll get a team down here."

Kuali flinched. "Just let me handle this end of the operation, Captain," he said. "I don't want my engineers exposed to all this." He motioned around the compartment to indicate what he meant.

Melissa grew irritated again. "Don't second-guess me, Chief," she snapped before tapping her com badge. "Schubert to _Constantine_," she called out.

"Go ahead," Bittu replied.

"I need a team of engineers over here to salvage the cores off this thing right away."

"Understood. I'll have them on the way in five minutes," Bittu reported.

"Bring the ship alongside and prepare for transfer…"

Bittu interrupted her. "We have incoming vessels, Captain!"

"Damn!" she hissed. "Hirogen?"

"I think so, sir. Time to intercept: ten minutes," he reported. "I don't think they see us yet," he added.

Melissa turned to Kuali. "Can you get one of those cores out of here in time?"

Kuali shook his head. "I need at least fifteen minutes. I can dump all three right now, but…"

Schubert cut him off. "So dump them. That's an order."

"But, Captain…" he tried to protest.

"DO IT!"

Kuali cringed away from her, but he obeyed. He keyed a few commands into the nearest core. Alarms sounded and the first core began to drop out of the ship. The second and third cores did the same. They were about halfway out of sight when all three stopped cold with dull clanking sounds.

"What happened?" Schubert demanded.

"Must be caught on some of the damage," Kuali replied. "I'll have to clear it."

"Get started," she ordered.

Kuali obeyed and started scanning. "Uh-oh," he muttered. He climbed up a catwalk and Schubert followed. The area above the main deck was a total mess. The catwalk was contorted and folded like origami. Conduits dangled like spider webs. Consoles had been ripped out of the bulkheads and lay in untidy, obstructive mounds. Kuali scrambled over one of the piles of debris and motioned her to follow. He moved up one more deck before he could show her the problem. The three cores were held in place by a sturdy frame that contacted the cores top, bottom and middle. The top of the frame had been shattered by something and had managed to tangle in the jumble of main lines coming out of the top of the cores. The frame had collapsed through one deck and caught on the bulkheads surrounding the cores. Even her untrained eye could see it would be like untangling a knot of string made of steel and coated in glass shards.

"Get started on this," she ordered. She made her way down the catwalk about the same time the engineering team arrived.

Three of the dozen crewmen took one look at the carnage around them and were violently ill. The others were taken aback, but focused on her for guidance. She sent them up the catwalk after Kuali, and beamed back to the _Constantine_.

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**USS _Constantine_**

Schubert didn't spare an instant once she marched back to the bridge. "How far off are they?" she barked the instant she stepped out of the turbolift.

Bittu stood up from the Captain's chair. "We have seven minutes," he reported as she slipped into the seat herself.

"Bearing?" she asked.

"They're coming in from all sides," Bittu said. He motioned at the main viewer and showed a ring of the Hirogen ships steadily closing on the _Constantine_ and her crippled sister.

Schubert keyed the intercom. "Engineering," she barked. "Do you have warp drive yet?"

"We're limited to warp 2, sir," the man on the other end explained. "We're currently fixing the buzzard scoop that was destroyed in the battle."

Schubert stared at the tactical display for a heartbeat. "That's enough," she declared. "Helm, set a course 10 by 35 degrees. Best possible speed. Weapons, fire quantum torpedoes and photon torpedoes at the Hirogen behind us and keep a steady fire on them. We'll swing around the circle and destroy them in detail."

The _Constantine_ jumped to warp and left a dozen quantum torpedoes in her wake. A steady stream of photon torpedoes flew out behind her and raced away into the darkness.

The new wave of Hirogen was better prepared than the first three waves to face the dreadnought. Survivors from the first encounter had taken the time to explain what the ship was capable of. The new clan to arrive on the scene was under the direction of a chieftain named Yaga. Chieftain Yaga was a bellicose, aggressive Hirogen with little patience for carefully laid plans, but at the same time he was a brilliant tactician. In an instant he realized that massing his ships before the _Constantine_ would only allow the powerful ship the ability to mass its firepower against him. He'd devised a plan on the spot that was more concept than instruction and directed his ships to follow his orders to the death if need be.

The quantum torpedoes were the first to draw blood from Yaga's men. They were too fast and too accurate to dodge, but they were not powerful enough to kill a single Hirogen ship at a stroke. The dozen quantum torpedoes knocked the Hirogen ships out of warp, but the photon torpedoes intended to finish them off were too slow to give an effective one-two knockout blow. The Hirogen easily shot the photon torpedoes down before they could do any harm. They resisted the urge to band together and spread out even more as they jumped back into warp and closed on the _Constantine_.

By this time the dreadnought was closing in headlong for the closest Hirogen ship. The Hirogen was almost in range when it darted away on a tangent at warp 3. Schubert tried to stop it with a quantum torpedo, but the Hirogen jumped to warp 9 and outran the warhead. Schubert shifted her target to the next ship in line with exactly the same results. She went after another and was frustrated again.

"Turn us back around," she ordered. "We'll cover the _Nero_, and draw them in."

It was what Yaga wanted all along. He gave the word and his ships spread out into an even line around the two dreadnoughts just out of range. What he proposed was easily grasped by the Hirogen, but not by Schubert. The art of the Hunter is to deliver a single, lethal blow to its prey. The art of war to which Schubert and her crew were trained, is about massing firepower to overwhelm an enemy. In past human conflicts, massing firepower meant massing both where the guns were located and where the shots were delivered. A smaller force could overcome a larger force by crushing a portion of the larger opponent. Wars can be won by this pattern and thus human ingenuity had struggled to find ways to mass more and more firepower in one platform. Hirogen had no such limitations. What Yaga and his clan understood was that it wasn't important where the weapons were located. It was important where and when their shots landed. Hirogen thousands of years before had forged an Empire on this understanding before they lost their common touch. Awakening the same instinct again was surprisingly easy.

The _Constantine_ arrived next to the _Nero_ about the same time as the three warp cores dropped out of her belly. Seeing the Hirogen were out of range, she dropped the _Constantine's_ shields and had her engineers beamed back aboard. Before the shields came up again, the Hirogen darted forward and unloaded everything they had. The dreadnought lit up as if set aflame. Almost all the outer hull was blown off in a flash. The shields came up just in time before the Hirogen set off something vital.

A crushing din filled the bridge. The noise was so loud it took Melissa's breath away and made her knees buckle. Waves of intense heat radiated through the superstructure soaking her in perspiration in an instant. "Get those warp cores!" she shouted when she managed to regain her wind. "GET US OUT OF HERE!"

The _Constantine_ reached out for the three warp cores with her tractor beams and drew them to her. She heaved her bulk away from the _Nero_ in a skittish dance between incoming warheads. Like a boxer blinded by the blows of his opponent, she drunkenly dashed away from her sister dragging the three warp cores with her.

The first warp core slipped under the safety of the shields right as a Hirogen warhead smashed into the empty space where it had been. The shields deflected much of the energy from the blast, but not the thermal pulse. Instantly the warp core was baked to a white hot mass of duratanium. The officer controlling the tractor beams was oblivious to this turn of events and dragged the near-molten mass into the starboard hangar. Crewmen scattered at the sight of the thing and barely managed to escape the compartment before the tractor beams were released. The warp core melted through the armored deck of the hangar like it was plastic. It plunged through to the deck below before it cooled enough to simply heat up the bulkheads around it. Seventeen crewmen were roasted alive before they could draw breath.

The _Constantine_ jumped to warp still dragging the two remaining cores with her. Even if it was only warp 2 she was a more difficult target at such speeds. It allowed her to tuck the next warp core into the portside hangar under much more favorable circumstances.

The Hirogen saw what she was trying to do and started trying to hit the remaining core.

"Turn us back around!" Schubert ordered.

The _Constantine_ whipped around back towards the _Nero_. Melissa had just enough time to explain what she had in mind before her officers keyed in the commands. The _Constantine_ dropped out of warp right next to the _Nero_, deposited the warp core and jumped back into warp again. She fired a quantum torpedo in her wake at the stranded core next to the dead ship it had once beat life into.

The _Caesar-_class warp cores were based on the largest warp cores then in production for the _Galaxy_-class. Even then the cores were two thirds larger and sixty times more powerful. They achieved this by running hotter and at peak output in pulses forty times a second. This made them less efficient than the _Galaxy_-class by a sizable margin and maintenance hungry, but they still managed to produce the required energy to power the mighty _Caesar_'s. Over-clocking these cores in this manner made them extremely fragile even when they were new. The energy they generated was marginally within the limits of the technology to contain it. So when the quantum torpedo struck this hot-rodded dynamo, it was unlike anything the Hirogen or even Schubert and her people had ever seen. The resulting explosion filled the former dark nebula like a supernova. The smaller Hirogen cores couldn't compare to this enormous flood of energy. Six more Hirogen ships and the _Nero_ vanished in an instant. A subspace shockwave raced away from the explosion's focus and scattered the surviving Hirogen ships like chaff before a gale. When it struck the _Constantine_, she was almost crushed out of hand. She barely managed to escape with her frame severely twisted out of true and a few more of her crew dashed to death against the bulkheads.

Melissa was thrown out of her seat along with everyone on the bridge. She smashed into the main viewer with a crash before toppling to the deck in a heap. Bittu landed on top of her breaking her arm and dislocating his shoulder. She would spend the next several weeks picking microfibers from the shattered viewer out of her face.

With shocking suddenness, silence thundered through the bridge. The rollicking tremors in the deck went still. The smell of dust, soot, and the unpleasant aromas of broken flesh filled Melissa's nostrils. She tasted blood, and dribbled her top incisors onto the deck. She tried to look around but her eyes stung and wouldn't focus. Her head rang. Her arm was savagely twisted under her and she was certain she could feel the bone piercing the skin.

Those that regained their senses first, raced back to their stations. Once there they frantically worked the controls until one-by-one they fell thoughtfully silent and still. Melissa had to be gently brought to her feet to survey the damage. The bridge was remarkably intact save for the main viewer and a panel that had exploded out of the rear bulkhead. Little trails of blood dotted the deck everywhere from broken noses and minor cuts. She noticed something dribbling onto the front of her uniform tunic and saw a steady stream of blood running off her chin. She assumed it came from her missing teeth until a runnel of blood filled her right eye.

"Captain, you need to go to sick bay," the navigator said with the hushed calm of the onset of shock.

She tried to look herself over, but moving her broken arm sent a riptide of agony up her side. She tried to wipe the blood out of her eye, but she was suddenly too stiff to move. "Where are they?" she demanded quietly. "Where are the Hirogen?"

"Gone, sir," the weapons officer replied in a near whisper. The core pushed them beyond our sensor range.

"Very well," she said. She cast a wary glance at the door to Jones' quarters.

The weapons officer followed her gaze and nodded. He acknowledged her silent order that the Admiral remain locked away, and cast about the rest of the bridge officers for their agreement. Nobody dissented.

Gently Melissa was led to the turbolift doors. "Mr. Mulkask, you have the con," she ordered before she left. Faintly she wondered if she would be overthrown while she was gone before the pain of her arms and her teeth blighted such concerns from her mind.


	10. Aligning the Chakras

Chapter 10

Aligning the Chakras

_The tradition of shipbuilding is one of the few things that systematically and consistently searches for the perfect balance of science and art. Science and mathematics produce structure, propulsion, and aesthetics. The art of shipbuilding is more a reflection upon the crews that endow a ship with function, efficiency, and that most elusive and enduring soul._

-Master Shipwright Vice Admiral Koichi Otoma

_SCE Handbook 1__st__ edition 2210 _

**_USS Pioneer_: Cove system**

The refit was going well, but the progress was far slower than Eddie liked. Tylan was doing her best to speed things along, but there was only so much she could do before he had to break out his tools and start working instead of supervising.

"I'd rather have you with me while I go over these things," she told him as he slung his tool belt over his shoulder on his way out of his office.

"Why? Everyone's grown accustomed to you by now," he said absently.

"It's _your_ timetable," she reminded him.

He turned to face her with a wide smile on his face. "Last I checked it was shot to hell," he chuckled.

Tylan stamped her foot in frustration. "They're blaming me for that!"

She was about to say more when he placed a finger to her lips and made a shushing sound. "I'm not," he said quietly. He watched her expression soften from hard lines of strain to one of the newer emotions she'd gradually allowed herself to show in the last few weeks. It was one of relief mingled with a dab of self-satisfaction. He withdrew his hand from her lips and shrugged. "It's a big job, Ty," he reasoned, "if anything must go wrong, I'd rather it be the schedule over the end product. Agreed?"

She made a disgusted smirk he found both shocking and adorable on her pretty face. "Agreed," she sighed. "What do I do when everyone blames me for a delay?"

"Let them," Eddie said matter-of-factly. "Just don't let them get so overwhelmed they stop thinking through the problem."

"I'm not sure I understand."

"Delays don't equate to failures," Eddie explained. "So long as they finish the work, they'll be satisfied with their efforts. If they lose that, this girl's never getting out of here."

Tylan's mood turned sullen. "That still leaves me with a bunch of shit dumped on my head every day," she grumbled. She was growing profane now that she could express her emotions. He found it cute.

Eddie wanted to say he'd make it up to her, but he had no idea how he could do that. She was vulnerable at the moment, and she was likely to get the wrong impression if he made such an offer. Eddie felt he owed her more than that. In the last few weeks she'd told him her story, and he had to admit she'd been grossly taken advantage of. Her parents, M'rath, and the Tal'Shiar had expected nothing short of complete obedience from her, and she'd dutifully complied for all of her sixty-five years. It was about time someone offered her the unconditional friendship she deserved, he reckoned.

There was another part of him that felt a deep longing for her. Tylan had always struck him as somehow… fractured. There were parts of her that managed to peek through her dispassionate veneer for years though he lacked the understanding to recognize the full extent of it. He had been, and still was, drawn to her. He sensed she needed a friend. Since she was an attractive woman to boot, it was easy to confuse his feelings with amorous desire. Lust wasn't something he trusted in himself, so he did his best to squelch it.

Eddie's romantic life wasn't something he was proud of. He'd had the occasional girlfriend, but they always left him for someone else just about the time he felt a deep connection forming. Over time he'd developed the notion the problem was with him. He was a forgiving man after all, and he didn't like to think less of the women he felt so deeply for. Tylan was the only woman so far he'd managed to forge a relationship with that he trusted wouldn't come back to hurt him.

"What could I do to make you forget about it?" he asked cheerfully.

Tylan stared at him for a long time before answering. Was there something she wasn't telling him? Finally she made a defeated sigh and said, "Rub my feet when you come back."

He nodded. "Sure thing," he said. On impulse he kissed her forehead before marching out the door. He missed the stunned expression on her face as she watched him go.

He made his way to deck 2 and surveyed the progress there. "Erratic" was the best way to describe the tangle of structural supports, power conduits, network nodes, and hull plates that was supposed to be a finished deck plan three weeks ago. The problem was they had to string the new twelve-phase conduits through the ship, but all their equipment ran on the old two-phase power. As a result, they were building temporary lines throughout the ship to fabricate the new sections, and then stripping them out once they were close to being finished. Also the replicators were being pushed to the limit fabricating hull plates, structural braces, and all the heavy materials they needed. Compounding the problem was all the new hardware they were making to adapt to the new power grid. It was enough to make him regret ever having made the suggestion of a refit to the Captain in the first place, but there was no stopping the project now. At least they would have a first rate ship once they worked all the kinks out.

"Koon to Gordon," his com badge chirped.

He tapped it, "Go ahead."

"The antimatter just arrived," Koon informed him.

Eddie breathed a sigh of relief. The antimatter could simplify things immeasurably. With the new core working, they could stop all this nonsense of the temporary power grid and work apace with the new grid. "Not a moment too soon. I'll be up shortly."

When he arrived in the hangar, he wasn't surprised to find Hurst and Forte discussing the mission next to the shuttles. He was a little surprised to find Kree talking to Cabrillo. Rumor had it the two were romping. Scenes like this only added fuel to the fire.

He was about to move past them into the first shuttle when Kree stopped him. "Did you look at the headdress, Commander?" she asked.

"Headdress?" he asked irritably.

"The feather headdress we found on Cove-3," Cabrillo explained.

"I don't have time for archaeology," Eddie muttered, and moved to step inside the shuttle again.

Kree stopped him and produced a silver feather. "It was made of these," she explained.

"While it's well-crafted, Lieutenant, I don't see why…"

He trailed off as Kree crushed the feather in her hand, twisted it viciously, and then allowed it to return to its normal shape. The feather looked just as delicate and unblemished as before. "We thought this might be useful if we could understand why it's so tough," she explained. "Armor this light and this resilient would be invaluable I should think."

Eddie took the feather from her with renewed interest. He examined it carefully, and flexed it gently in his fingers. He tried twisting it apart, pulling off parts of it, and crushing it like she had, and still the feather returned to its original shape. "I see," he said thoughtfully. "This is a thorny development. What's this made of?"

"Silver," Cabrillo said, "I scanned it to make sure."

"Silver isn't this resilient," Eddie protested.

"I know," Cabrillo said.

Eddie considered the feather in his hand for another moment before pocketing it. "Thank you both," he said. "I'll see if we can't learn something from it before long."

He could see it wasn't the answer they wanted from him, but he had more immediate problems to solve. He moved past them and quickly pulled the antimatter hopper out of the shuttle. He scanned the contents of the device briefly before handing it off to a chief to take down to the new core. He did the same with the other shuttle and emerged to face a beaming Dr. Cole Spaulding.

"I trust you found the antimatter to your specifications," Spaulding gloated.

"Not a bit of it is cracked," Eddie replied referring to the habit of antimatter to revert to matter by "cracking" into plasma. "Thank you, Doctor."

Spaulding continued to stare at Eddie as if expecting him to say more. Finally the man broke down into a disgusted smirk. "Ingrates!" he snarled before storming off.

On impulse, Eddie stopped him. He produced the silver feather. "Could you examine this more carefully, Doctor?" he asked.

Spaulding was incredulous. "Why?"

Eddie repeated the demonstration Kree had shown him and watched Spaulding's interest climb. Arrogant or not, Cole Spaulding had an acute sense of curiosity and the intellect to produce answers to the questions he posed. "There's no reason why this should be so resilient. It's only made of silver," he pointed out.

Spaulding took the feather and repeated the punishment. "Fibrous structure, interlocking mesh, and yet the texture is preserved along with malleability," he reasoned aloud. "This could be a heretofore unheard of forging technique." He stroked the feather thoughtfully before adding, "We could build the ship out of this stuff."

"Silver?" Eddie said unconvinced.

Spaulding shook his head. "You're an engineer, Commander. You should know if silver was forged to this strength, other metals can be as well. I'll look into this at once."

The scientist made his way out of the hangar.

Eddie pushed the thought of the silver feather out of his mind. He had a warp core to start up. The two hoppers of antimatter amounted to about one and a half times what he needed in the strictest sense, but he'd have preferred more. The new core was not all that well understood yet.

It took about an hour to fill the antimatter tanks around the new core since the feed lines were all linked to the large buzzard scoops on the noses of the main nacelles outside. There was also the added complication that the new core didn't have a single tank like the old linear core.

The old core was the simple vertical column standardized in Starfleet for almost two hundred years. Antimatter was fed into a dilithium crystal about halfway up the core and combined with a trace amount of matter to produce a release of energy that was channeled up and down the column producing the two phases of power that ran the ship from top to bottom. It was a design refined over the years to a peak of efficiency and output, but it had its flaws. The two phases of power were interdependent in the warp drive. The disruption of the field in one phase caused the failure of the other in short order. Eddie had redesigned _Pioneer_'s core to produce a more fluid field. Primarily what he'd done was to allow the output of one phase to make up for a draw on the other so that the disruption on a single phase simply caused a draw on the other phase instead of collapsing the field. It worked fairly well, but only up to a point.

The new twelve phase core was a new beast entirely. Before his demise, Lieutenant Commander Garrett had come to the conclusion the most efficient engine in nature (and thereby the most stable) was the hurricane. There was much credence to his thoughts. Hurricanes drew and dispersed massive amounts of energy once they stabilized into a recognizable structure. If they could continue to draw energy from the space around them, they could continue to function in perpetuity. The hexagonal storm at the north pole of Saturn was firm evidence to support this notion along with the corellas storm over the south pole of Vulcan's primary gas giant of Khush. Designing a warp core that operated on this structure had never been attempted. Garrett had worked through the details, found a few points of inspiration from Gordon's modifications to the existing warp core, and produced a masterpiece.

For the first time, they would have a three-dimensional output from the core instead of simple straight lines. Energy would be vertical, horizontal, and in depth as well as rotate in all axis.

Eddie had taken the added precaution of linking the outputs from the old core into the new one just in case there was a need to bolster the reaction.

As impressive as the new core sounded, it was surprisingly small. The old linear core had taken up fifteen decks and was three meters across at the reaction chamber. The hurricane core was a meter and a half across and a hand span thick. In fact this was three times the size of the original design Garrett had produced. Eddie and his engineers couldn't quite fathom such a small dynamo powering a ship the size of _Pioneer,_ and had studiously gone back to the drawing board to pad their figures to an acceptable comfort zone.

Eddie took his place near the controls. "Everyone ready?" he asked.

A series of "Aye-aye's" circulated around the room.

He keyed the first sequence.

Inside the core three rings of dilithium crystals began to rotate opposite to one another. Another crystal, barely two points of a carat in mass, began to spin wildly in the middle of where the "eye" of the hurricane would form.

He checked the gauges carefully before keying the next sequence. Antimatter was injected into the central crystal along with a trace amount of matter. The familiar blue glow of an antimatter reaction filled the room as the new core began to power up. He watched the gauges again and was shocked at the output he was seeing. "Increase power to the rings," he ordered. The three rings' alignment was crucial to this core and the output from the central crystal was starting to disturb them.

Satisfied with the reaction, he started the next sequence and fired up the outermost ring. The deck thrummed with a pleasant vibration as the second ring began to produce energy. Eddie glanced through the top of the reactor and saw the familiar shape of a storm forming inside. He checked the gauges again and was satisfied all was alright. He keyed the next ring.

The output from the core quadrupled instantly. The thrum through the deck was replaced with a roar not unlike standing behind a rocket engine. This was a shock. The alignment of the crystals began to waver. The meters indicated they were beginning to descend into the central crystal which would mean a breach.

"Full output from the core to the alignment grid!" he shouted above the din.

He watched his battered, often repaired, barely functional linear core flash to life in a massive pulse of hot white energy. He knew it didn't have the fuel for a burn like this, but the new core had to stabilize. He watched the alignment grid waver, and solidify for just an instant before he keyed the final ring into life.

The gauges instantly pegged themselves to redline as the output jumped by an unheard of six orders of magnitude. The roar was replaced with a loud BANG. The deck jumped under his feet sending him two meters into the air along with everyone else in the room. He landed in a heap on the controls just as the old core coughed, popped, and went dead.

He stood up cradling his arm which had taken a nasty crack on the console and surveyed the gauges. His ears were ringing from the din so it took a moment to realize the room was quiet. To his astonishment, the output from the core remained exponentially high. He checked all the twelve phases and saw each was producing more energy than the old core had ever hoped to give. The crystal alignment had sorted itself out once the proper balance had been struck and the input feeds to maintain the hurricane had automatically powered down to a negligible level.

Eddie felt awed. He sent a silent breath of thanks to his old, regrettably gone subordinate. Garrett had been irritating, lazy, and a constant trial to command, but his genius had produced this amazing thing. He looked with wonder down into the core as the eye of the hurricane opened. The churning energy inside the core began to settle down into the lazy swirl of a cyclone. Blue-white tendrils of energy resembling cigarette smoke emerged in the core as the reaction began to normalize. Everyone around the room drifted towards the core to gaze at the spectacle of it. The sight stirred a primal curiosity in all of them, and they stared, amazed and afraid, at the unfolding spectacle of light and turbulence before them.

Emily Blackburn was the first to speak. "Beautiful terror," she sighed.

"Amen," the others said softly.

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The next day Okuma demanded a status report on the refit. She'd been out near Cove-9 and missed the activation of the new core so a fresh perspective was in order. She examined the new core and it was a striking sight, but the tumble-down condition of the ship was alarming. Everything was behind schedule. She demanded Gordon and Tylan present themselves in her quarters (her office was demolished never to be rebuilt) and was pleasantly surprised when Spaulding and Koon decided to attend.

The news was not what she'd hoped for.

"We've drained the old core starting up the new one," Eddie explained.

"Does that pose a problem?" she asked. She was under the impression the old core would be set aside once the new one was up and running.

"Initially no," Eddie admitted. "We can strip all the two phase conduits in short order and start powering up all the new systems we've installed so far."

"It's a safety issue that worries us," Tylan pointed out.

"The new core's not safe?" Okuma asked. Surely that wasn't the case.

"If it continues to work we'll be fine," Tylan said.

"But we'll never get it started again if we need to shut it down without the old core," Eddie explained. "I can rebuild it so we don't have to burn it out next time. Bear in mind it was low on fuel to begin with. With a proper primer of antimatter, it would operate flawlessly."

"But we don't need it!" Okuma protested. "We can't cram that thing back inside the new design!"

Tylan and Gordon exchanged a satisfied glance. "We may have a solution to that," Tylan said.

"Garrett didn't expect we'd need a separate source of power to operate the new core, but he did design another core just the same," Eddie said.

"Go on," Samantha snapped. She was growing impatient with this.

"Garrett designed a new linear core for the shuttles that if we scaled it up would work perfectly," Gordon said.

Samantha stared at Eddie before turning her astonished gaze to Peyter. "I can't believe he's telling us this, Captain," she growled.

Eddie didn't let Koon reply. "I can build it in less than a day," he offered.

"How much power do you need?" Okuma almost shouted at Gordon. "You've spent the last three months telling me this new core will solve all our problems and now you're telling me we need another one?"

"Garrett didn't expect the new core required so much energy to get started," Tylan repeated.

Okuma stuffed down her temper before allowing herself to speak. "No," she snapped. "Build the rest of the ship and get us underway before you start frittering your time away on another gadget."

"We're going to need it," Eddie protested. "If the new core needs to be shut down…"

Samantha cut him off. "Don't shut the damn thing off then!" she barked angrily. She turned her attention to Koon. "You can't expect us to swallow this one, Captain."

Koon turned thoughtful. "It's a risk," he said at length. "But I see your point, Commander. We can't stay here tinkering with the ship forever."

"But, Captain!" Eddie pleaded.

Koon raised a hand to silence his chief engineer. "_Voyager_ can't wait forever, Mr. Gordon," he said flatly. "They're taking just as many risks to get home as we are to find them. We must advance the schedule some if we expect to be of any use to them."

"Aye, sir," Eddie said sullenly.

Satisfied she'd made some progress, Okuma moved on to the next point. "How is the deck plan moving along?"

Eddie and Tylan exchanged another glance. This one was anything but amused. Tylan was about to speak when Eddie beat her to it. "We're a month behind schedule."

"Six weeks," Tylan corrected.

Samantha was too stunned to be angry. She cast a shocked stare at Koon and saw he was just as surprised as she was.

"It's the old design," Eddie explained. "The structure isn't matching what we're expecting to find under the bulkheads."

"We have a full set of schematics from Utopia Planitia," Okuma protested.

"And they are all WRONG!" Tylan snapped angrily. "I've covered them exhaustively, and almost every print of the interior is markedly different from what we're finding."

"Such as?" Koon asked.

"Lattice frames where structural ribbing should be, stressed skin hull plating where there should be structural fields, and power conduits where there should be utility lines to name a few," Gordon muttered. "Most of this wouldn't matter if we were talking about a compartment or two, but the refit is all across the ship. My people have been griping for years about the little stuff around here, but now that we can see under the bulkheads, I'm shocked we ever made it out of Martian orbit. We're several thousand tones overweight and nothing like what our design should be."

"Well," Koon said slowly, "this is only the third ship of this class out of the yards." Thinking aloud he continued, "Matter of fact this was launched ahead of schedule. _USS Phoenix_ was supposed to go into service before us, but Captain Shivek rewrote the mission requirements for this class during the shakedown cruise of the _Nebula_. We wound up getting out of the yards before Yoyodyne finished working out the kinks in the _Phoenix_. All this could be a symptom of that process."

Okuma decided to sidestep this alarming news and move onto the next issue, "What about building the new design?"

"We've been occupied with demolition work for the most part," Tylan said. "We have main engineering and the hangar completed, but that's about it. It's a lot of heavy work we needed to get out of the way, but most of those compartments are just open volumes of air surrounded by armored bulkheads."

Okuma glared at Tylan. She didn't trust the Romulan woman even if Eddie and the Captain did. A woman in her position could sabotage their efforts easily.

She was about to point this out to Koon when Spaulding spoke up. "Perhaps I could offer a solution," he said with a broad smile. His cheerful demeanor derailed the escalating argument by sheer force of surprise.

"Like what?" Eddie asked.

Spaulding held up the silver feather Kree and Cabrillo had found on Cove-3. "The structure of this feather is perfect, Commander," he almost leered. "Strong, light, and easily replicated. I promise you this could be an invaluable asset."

"How so?" Eddie asked.

"This material isn't forged, it's _spun._" Spaulding produced a PADD. "The feather itself is made up of tiny filaments of spun silver. The filaments are formed much along the lines of ordinary proteins. Those structures are combined into microscopic, three-tined hooks that interlink and help align one another. I've never seen a structure this perfect since I examined Tholian textiles under a microscope."

"Does that include the quill of this feather?" Koon asked.

"That's even more interesting," Spaulding gushed. He brought up a magnification of the quill on his PADD. "The silver is structured into another protein along the quill that automatically shifts to the feather protein once it's separated from the surrounding material. This stuff is better than memory wire. Whoever forged this to begin with figured out a way to make the material itself know what it was supposed to be."

"Do you know how they did it?" Koon asked.

"That's something I was hoping Commander Gordon could explain," Spaulding admitted. "Honestly, I was hoping he could show me this process in action."

Eddie studied the data carefully. Tylan stepped up next to him. Much to Okuma's annoyance, Eddie slipped the Romulan woman in front of him and peered at the PADD over her head while he drummed his fingers thoughtfully on her shoulders. It was a gesture entirely too intimate for Okuma's liking.

She preferred Eddie maintain a professional distance from the woman, but it wouldn't be the first time she'd find herself frowning at the clownish ways of her Chief Engineer. It was safe to say she would have made the life of Lieutenant Commander Edmund Gordon intolerable if she'd had her way all these years. It was the one sour part of her relationship with Koon. Peyter had entirely blocked her from imposing her will on the Engineering staff. She knew her Captain intentionally kept Gordon away from her. While she considered this terribly unfair and unprofessional, Peyter never told her why he gave Eddie preferential treatment. She considered it a slap in the face, but she couldn't bring herself to resent Peyter for it. He had a way of turning on his considerable charm when he saw her growing upset. Typically anything she brought up with him that he didn't allow her to deal with, he resolved more or less to her satisfaction by himself.

Faintly she noticed Tylan's expression. The woman's face showed stark confusion that only drifted towards blank incomprehension the longer she studied the data. Tylan started casting glances at Spaulding and Gordon that betrayed her growing disbelief.

Okuma saw Gordon nodding. His eyes danced with new ideas as more and more of the feather's structure became apparent. Having only recently shot down one of his wilder ideas, she was miffed she had to confront another in such a short span of time. "This'll never work," she muttered.

Koon turned thoughtful. "Your thoughts, Eddie?"

"The tooling for this would be a cinch!" Gordon exclaimed. "One low-power replicator could spool out this stuff by the ton while we formed it into what we want."

"That doesn't sound very strong, Eddie," Tylan said with a frown.

"We can make this work," he insisted.

"Are you sure of this, Doctor?" Koon asked sounding doubtful himself.

"Dr. Totem concurs, Captain. This method of fabrication could save weeks of time and make the ship immeasurably stronger," Spaulding promised.

"This isn't the time to start toying with the design!" Okuma protested.

Gordon shook his head. "This would integrate the structure and the hull to an unheard of degree, Commander," he said. "In terms of fabrication it means we only have to make one kind of material instead of replicating separate parts of the hull and structure. One man could have a compartment the size of crew's quarters done in an hour. It takes five of my people all day to finish a room."

"Proceed," Koon ordered.

"WHAT?" Okuma blurted.

"I'll get started right away," Eddie said. He turned to Spaulding. "Would you come with me, Doctor?"

The two men left the room merrily chatting about the new process.

"This is a mistake, Captain," Tylan said.

Koon shook his head. "Have a little faith, Lieutenant. Commander Gordon wouldn't lead us down the wrong path. He would stroll down a longer one with more scenic vistas perhaps, but not the wrong one." He smiled.

Samantha noticed his hair again. It was almost entirely iron gray now. Was the stress getting to him?

He nodded to Samantha and Tylan and made his way out of the room.

"We have to stop this," Tylan said once he was gone.

For once Samantha agreed with the Romulan, but she was slowly resigning herself to the inevitable. "I've tried to overrule Gordon for several years, Tylan. The Captain never takes my side on engineering issues."

"He just took your side about the linear core," Tylan pointed out somewhat petulantly.

"Only on the timing," Samantha said. "Eddie will get to build the new core in due time. If it were up to me he'd forget about it."

"The computer core isn't reliable enough to handle this yet," Tylan insisted.

Samantha glared angrily at the Romulan woman. "Tough shit, Lieutenant," she snarled. "If it were up to me you'd be in the brig or off the ship. With that in mind, who do you think has the credibility to stop Eddie from wasting as much time as he likes?"

Tylan regarded her impassively for a long moment. "I will obey your orders, Commander," she said calmly. There was anger bubbling beneath the surface of the words, but there was pain as well.

Samantha felt a bitter rush of self-satisfaction knowing she'd stung Tylan in any way. "Fine," she said coolly, "then either talk Eddie out of this madness, advance the schedule, or fix the computer core. Dismissed."

Tylan got up to leave but hesitated at the door. Without turning around she asked quietly, "Commander, what has M'rath told you about me?"

Samantha saw no need to sugarcoat the truth. "He said you were provided to him by the Tal'Shiar to tend to his 'needs' as he put it. You were his designated concubine if I read him right."

Tylan stood stalk still for a long time before leaving without a word.

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**Cove 3:**

The three figures shimmered into existence atop a 300-meter tall dune crest. The eastern horizon was only just beginning to show the first signs of dawn, and the air was cold and still. Koon and M'rath kept a careful eye on Heartshock as the bulky alien surveyed his surroundings.

Heartshock drank in huge lungfuls of the desert air. His keen eyes picked out the distant peaks of mountains surrounding this place. The tops of those peaks were dusted in golden sand instead of snow despite a chill down here in the basin that made his breath come out in clouds. "This is Sanctuary," he confirmed. "There is no other place I know of this arid."

"I see," Koon said with a smile. "That's reassuring."

Heartshock stretched his bulky frame instantly sending the diminutive M'rath into a tense fighting stance. He laughed. "No need to worry about me attacking you, Lieutenant. I'm simply glad to have a chance to use up as much space as I can. My cell isn't anywhere near the size of my former lodgings."

He strolled a few steps away from Koon and M'rath along the crest of the dune admiring the deceptively smooth texture the surface of the abrasive sand presented. "Why did you bring me here, Captain?"

"I thought you might like a chance to stretch your legs, Heartshock," Koon explained.

It was a point of some annoyance Koon never addressed Heartshock as "My Lord" or "Lord Heartshock." As one who felt entitled to such courtesies, the Hirogen grew angry. "I will accord you the privilege to explain your insolence but once, Captain. Why don't you acknowledge my station?"

Koon's brows shot up in surprise, but he didn't answer immediately. After a long moment of consideration he admitted, "I come from a nation plagued with despots, Heartshock. I was taught to revere the Tzars and dictators from history when I was a child, but my father never saw a use for them. He would tell me about Peter the Great and Alexander II in terms of what it meant to our family. Every one of those men who felt it was their birthright to be better than my ancestors did their best to exterminate us to further their ambitions. My family has had less and less use for "great men." Stalin nearly wiped us out during the Battle of Moscow. My great-great-great-great grandfather Anatoly watched all fourteen of his sons killed by commissars before they could raise a hand to defend our home against the invaders. He moved to the frozen mountains of Siberia to escape them and taught his new family to admire the man in front of you for the worth he demonstrated not what he claimed was his due."

"I'm not sure I follow this 'commissar' business. Should I feel insulted, Captain?" Heartshock asked.

"Chances are you will be insulted no matter how I phrase it," Koon admitted with a chuckle. "But the fact of the matter is you are not measured by your social standing on my ship. You will be accorded whatever esteem you demonstrate yourself to be worthy of."

"I'm a prisoner," Heartshock pointed out.

"You were planning to kill my crew," Koon shot back. "I would earn a place in Hell for ignoring that."

"A place reserved for fools," M'rath added.

Heartshock considered his place in that structure carefully. He had to admit Koon was being generous to a fault by allowing him to live at all. Furthermore he didn't have the obligation to explain himself to Heartshock. It slowly dawned on the Hirogen the extent to which Koon was willing to set aside his first impressions. Had their positions been reversed, Koon's skull would be displayed in a case. "You're about to offer me something," Heartshock declared. "You wouldn't have brought me here if that wasn't the case."

M'rath's stony expression cracked a trifle to expose a brief flash of surprise. Koon's expression turned serious.

"Very perceptive, Heartshock," Koon admitted. "We're about to travel into the Delta Quadrant. I'm willing to admit our knowledge of the region is next to nothing. I'd like to grant you a place on my crew if you'd agree to serve as a guide."

Heartshock stared at Koon. "Guide?" he asked quizzically.

"You are a hunter," M'rath pointed out. "You do have guides in your society?"

Heartshock stared at the two men for so long they realized he had no idea what they were talking about. "I'm unfamiliar with the term," he finally admitted. "Is this some form of diplomat?"

Koon and M'rath exchanged a dazed glance. "It can be," Koon said. "More to the point we want you to tell us what to expect and how to get where we're going in the fastest and safest way possible."

Heartshock's mind still didn't quite grasp what he was being asked to do. "Is this some sort of tracking you speak of? Are you looking for something in the Delta Quadrant?"

"In a manner of speaking that's exactly what we're saying," Koon said.

"Planets and stars aren't hard to find, Captain. I don't see how you would need me," Heartshock admitted.

"We're not looking for a planet or a star. We're looking for some of our people," Koon said.

Slowly Heartshock understood the full magnitude of what he was being asked to do. "I can't grant you safe passage through Hirogen space, Captain."

"Pity," M'rath sneered bitterly.

"Is there a way around your space, Heartshock?" Koon asked.

"Depends on where you're going," Heartshock allowed.

"Is there a way we could buy our way through Hirogen space?" Koon asked. He had no way of knowing either way so he figured it wouldn't hurt to offer that option.

"No," Heartshock said flatly. "The Clans barely speak to one another let alone to outsiders. Even if I were able to settle a deal with my own Clan, I'd never be able to make the others agree to a uniform price. They might barter for my life, but I have rivals that would just assume I die."

"Is the situation really that chaotic?" M'rath asked incredulously. His orderly Romulan mind was appalled at what Heartshock was telling him. It was one thing to go into the Delta Quadrant through unknown space, but it was quite another to sail headlong into anarchy. Even when he was plotting against the Federation, the Tal'Shiar knew they did so in an orderly manner so as not to create a mess they would have to clean up once their plans bore fruit. What his Imperial masters did was statecraft set to the tune of crisis. The Tal'Shiar could operate against the Federation knowing full well humanity and its allies would respond as a nation-state. If what Heartshock implied was true, there would be no way to understand the Hirogen except in the laborious face-to-face, individual method. It was a strategy doomed to attrition. M'rath knew as well as Koon attrition would destroy _Pioneer_ before they got anywhere near _Voyager_.

Heartshock chose to ignore M'rath and spoke to Koon. "These people of yours… where are they exactly?"

"We know they were passing through Ak'Ar space a few months ago," Koon explained. "I'm not sure you'd know of them."

Heartshock allowed himself to express the shock he felt. His eyes went wide, and his hands fell limp at his sides. "How did they get out there?" he asked in stunned disbelief. It was unimaginable that one of Starfleet's ships had arrived in a place so deep inside the Delta Quadrant without the Hirogen eliminating them. From what he knew of Earth, any vessel from that place would have spent several decades dodging clan after clan of Hirogen. It was unheard of they would have survived let alone remained obscure enough for him to be oblivious of humans.

"Long story," Koon sighed. "The short version is they arrived on the far side of the Delta Quadrant by a way we can't duplicate, and they're making their way back home."

Heartshock nodded. The elements of what Koon was asking settled into his mind. He knew the humans were overly sentimental, but he had no idea it was quite this strong. Since he'd always framed his exploits in terms of a hunt and the attendant glory, he shifted the facets of what was needed to suit a hunt. By any measure it would be difficult. Even with the Hirogen net, finding a ship (large or small) wandering blind through space would be the challenge of a lifetime. It would require traversing territory he'd never seen and never studied in detail. Several of the Clans would bar the way. Those pesky Borg would have to be dealt with at least a few times. The grandiosity of the task appealed to him.

On the other hand he'd have to live and work with this crew for the rest of his life. They would insist he change his ways to suit them rather than the other way around. He wasn't sure he could do all that. "May I have some time to consider your offer, Captain?" he asked.

"All the time you need, Heartshock," Koon said. "For the time being I thought you might like to have a little time alone." He tossed Heartshock a com badge. "We'll call you when it's time to go. Be sure to contact us if there's anything you need." Koon motioned to a satchel on the ground. "This should be enough food and water for a few days. If you need more, don't hesitate to get in touch."

Heartshock shook his head in amazement. "You are the most interesting prey I've ever encountered, Captain. I've never had someone I've shot at be so generous to my needs."

Koon smiled. "That's just the thing, Heartshock, I need far more from you than the sum of my blood." He waved a farewell, tapped his com badge and transported away.

M'rath remained behind. "Consider the offer, Heartshock," he urged.

"You of all beings should know what I'm capable of, Lieutenant," the Hirogen warned. "It's not like this is a simple shift of allegiance to another clan."

"I know full well what you are," M'rath said. "You're a wild animal. I might add you're the kind who isn't one to be tamed. The Captain and I disagree on this point."

"You don't think he should've given me this offer?"

M'rath shook his head. "Captain Koon has more faith in you than I do, Hirogen. I think we'd be better off leaving you here, but he won't allow it."

Heartshock smiled. "You could kill me right now," he pointed out. "The Captain is a forgiving man. I doubt you'd suffer for it."

M'rath nodded. The Romulan looked suddenly exhausted. "It's what I should do, but that would deny you a rare gift, Heartshock," he sighed.

"What would that be?"

"That's something you'll have to decide for yourself," M'rath said. "In my case it was a chance to live as myself and not someone else." He took a deep breath and let it out in another great sigh. "The strange thing is the Captain values who I am even now."

"Meaning he has a use for you," Heartshock pointed out sharply.

M'rath nodded. "True enough, but I don't believe he would discard me if he didn't find a niche for my skills."

"What do you believe?"

M'rath shook his head. "I don't know. I really don't. Most likely he'd find something I could do until I figured out something I was content to apply myself to."

"I'm a hunter," Heartshock pointed out.

M'rath brightened. "We're on the hunt for something. Show us the superiority of your skills, and I promise the Captain will make full use of them in the years to come."

The Romulan tapped his com badge and transported away.

Alone for the first time in weeks, Heartshock surveyed the dunes again. He took a deep breath, picked up the satchel, and began running for the tallest mountain peak in the distance just as the sun peeked over the horizon. He'd give the Captain his answer once he reached the summit, he resolved.

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**_USS Pioneer_**

Eddie was half right as it turned out. The tooling for the new material Spaulding had dubbed fibercore, was a cinch to produce. The production of hull plates, decking, structural ribbing, and all other parts of the ship's shell could be accomplished with one small replicator and about half a dozen form machines. The replicator could be small and simple because its sole products were long strands of millimeter-thick threads of pure fibercore. These strands could be fed into what were essentially high-tech looms. The looms could produce any shape from large sheets to thick cables and tubes of the fibercore. From there the raw product was taken from the fabrication shop. Since the raw product was pliable as cloth, lugging the fiberercore forms around the ship was no more complicated than folding and unfolding the rough forms. From there the forms were set in place, and cut to size with a precision plasma cutter. Next the fibercore was quenched into its final shape. It amounted to heating the soft forms to a near molten state, and then cooling it off slowly. This could be accomplished with simple structural fields modulated into precise shapes.

It took a team of sixteen engineers a day to complete deck 1. That belied the fact it had taken thirty engineers working in shifts a week to demolish the old deck plan. By the time they started on deck 2, the entire engineering staff was confident the new hull design would be completed barely a week behind the projected timetable.

That left the outfitting of the ship as the one snag in getting _Pioneer_ flying again. While the new twelve-phase power harness wasn't hard to install, the computer core and network was not working as hoped. Barring the laborious task of shifting personal belongings and equipment from compartment to compartment to allow room for construction, the computer core was the single most labor-intensive, and by far most ambitious, project on Eddie's plate. The physics of the new core were understood well enough in abstract, but nobody had ever constructed a twelve-phase power computer core on this immense scale. Designing it had taken half the scientists and all the computer specialists every waking moment since they discovered what the specifications would be. Some were convinced it would never be completed, but would remain a work in progress for the rest of their careers.

Indeed the term computer "core" was misleading. The projected design wasn't expected to be constructed for at least a year while it was modeled and tested on a smaller scale. Instead the computer team had decided to build several small nodes to be placed strategically about the ship and networked via data leads that would serve as the new core's network once it was completed. It sounded entirely feasible at first, but the nodes were crashing with increasing frequency as the demand on them ramped up for operations. Eddie was resigned to this sort of trouble, and was confident it would be worked out in time. Computer science was more art than science at this level, and no amount of ball-busting would iron out the trouble any faster.

Tylan was not so sanguine. Day after day she pressed the computer specialists to make headway, and day after day they insisted there was nothing but time that could solve their problems. After her discussion with Okuma, she resolved to sort out the impasse herself. She returned to her lab and spent sixteen hours modeling the various components. Then her node seized up and crashed. While the data was intact, the delay only demonstrated how far they had to go. Exasperated, she returned to Eddie's office for her shift coordinating the various projects around the ship.

She found Eddie awake and annoyingly buoyed by the day's progress. "Morning, Ty," he greeted her cheerfully. He cast a skeptical eye over her. "Didn't you sleep?"

With a disgusted grunt she brushed past him and settled in for another long day of fielding questions. She sat there for several minutes when she noticed the intercom was surprisingly quiet. "Did the intercom crash?" she asked with an irritated humph.

Eddie stared at her carefully before answering. "What have you been doing?" he asked.

"I asked you a simple question, Eddie!" she snapped. "I'm trying to do my job here and you're wasting time trying to chat."

Eddie was taken aback by her temper, but he composed himself quickly into a concerned expression. "Things are running fairly smooth since we finished the looms," he said patiently. "Most of what I've been working on all day is the network and the power hub. The demo crews are still creeping along, but feeding junk in to reclaimers isn't all that complicated. Most of those guys are just resigned to sorting out a mess anyway."

The intercom on the desk chirped. "Mixaz to Commander Gordon."

Chief Mixaz was the head of the demo crews. "Speak of the devil," Eddie muttered. He leaned forward and tapped the intercom. "Go ahead."

"We've found something. You must come and see this."

Eddie sighed. "Want to field this one?" he asked her.

Tylan looked away. She was tired, angry, and in no mood to be reasonable.

Eddie keyed the intercom again. "I'm on my way," he said and shut the panel off.

He turned to her. "Get some rest, Ty," he ordered.

"There's too much to do," she said sullenly. She moved to turn the panel back on when his hands snaked over her shoulders and began rubbing. Tension she was scarcely aware of uncoiled from knots in her neck and upper back as if by magic. Eddie moved expertly from one knot to another until she slumped into the chair and let her head loll against his forearm.

"Don't think you're not appreciated, Ty," he said reasonably. Tenderly he stroked the soft skin of her neck with his fingers. "You've earned a break."

"Shi hetch mana joxha, pick," she muttered drowsily. _Shut up and fornicate with me, you fool._

Eddie cocked his head quizzically to the side. "I'll never win an argument in your language, Ty, so I'll just agree with you."

Tylan giggled. "Gla hoo?" _Is that so?_

She was about to explain herself when he did something unexpected. He kissed her lightly on the lips. Her eyes which had begun to drift shut, popped open in surprise. "Why did you do that?" she demanded quietly.

"Been dying to do that for years," he said flippantly. His expression grew thoughtful. "To tell you the truth I've been having these dreams where you kiss me in my sleep. I was curious how it would feel."

Tylan felt a stab of panic. Maybe Eddie didn't sleep quite as soundly as she thought. He slipped his hands off her shoulders and moved for the door. On impulse she blurted, "So how did it feel?"

He pivoted on his heel and flashed a charming smile. "Effortless," he said.

Tylan was suddenly indignant. She slipped her shoe off and flung it at him as he darted playfully out the door. It bounced off the bulkhead and he could hear his good-natured chuckle drifting back up the corridor as he marched away. After a time she felt secure enough to allow herself a laugh. It felt good. Furthermore it felt even better to reflect on the kiss he'd stolen. She wasn't sure how she would broach the truth with him, but she was confident it could be managed now that he was almost in on the game. A few more steps and he would claim her. She allowed a brief fantasy to play out in her mind how that might play out. Her experience with men was extensive to say the least, and she was wondering how she might mollify his fragile ego. All men had fragile egos after all, and it was the duty of a woman to accept them both intellectually and physically. She hoped he wasn't the type that became belligerent in bed, but she was besotted enough with Eddie not to care. She'd have to step carefully around him if…

"Step…" something tickled at the back of her mind. "Intern step…" she said distantly. Where had she heard that?

In a flash of recognition it dawned on her: "Totem!"

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"So what the hell are they?" Koon finally asked.

Eddie opened his mouth to answer, shut it when nothing came to mind, and gave a hopeless shrug. "I wish I knew, sir," he said with a disgusted sniff. He used his Cockney accent to better emphasize his dilemma. "Fookin' widget's draw'n nuff' juice to pull the sun outada' sky tho'."

"They've been aboard since Mars, I take it?" Koon asked.

Eddie nodded.

"Would they have anything to do with the structural differences you described earlier?"

"'Twould explain a lot, yes," Eddie admitted. "The power these things process has a different amplitude than that of the rest of the grid."

"Have they been exposed to the new grid?" Koon asked.

"I've had this section offline since the Hirogen attack, Captain," Eddie said looking both relieved and grim. "I think it was Heartshock himself who beamed in a few compartments over that way." He motioned off to his right vaguely.

"The function of these devices has to do with networking and power," Chief Mixaz asserted.

"I'll take your word for it, Chief, but networking what?" Koon asked.

The Ro engineer slapped his hands on his thighs in his peculiar form of a shrug. The young alien had a doleful expression permanently etched on his face thanks to his exoskeleton. It was accented by a bright blue line etched into the red bone as a symbol of his exile from the Ro homeworld. The rough equivalent of a tattoo for the alien. Mixaz had applied for this mission right out of technical training on Jupiter station, and begged Koon to take him along. He'd been expelled from his home as a heretic, and rather than seek forgiveness he wanted to indulge his curiosity about the wider galaxy. The Ro disapproved of curiosity on some vague spiritual doctrine. While the race was respected, there was no denying they were the most reticent species in the Federation. Intensely private and widely regarded for their technology, the Ro had made a name for themselves building ships for Orion, Andorian, and Tholian firms for hundreds of years. Still they were so insular that contact with them had only happened twenty years before despite their home being located along one of the busiest trade routes in the Alfa quadrant.

Mixaz turned out to be a thoughtful engineer. He thrived on intricate problems that took patience and application to sort out. Usually Gordon had the Ro working in the clean room fixing things that everyone else was too exasperated to deal with. In his spare time Mixaz read histories, star charts, and listened to concerti. He'd been the first to point out to Eddie there was something strange about _Pioneer_'s structure two years into the mission, but even Mixaz didn't see a reason to tear the ship apart to figure out why.

When the opportunity to demolish the old frame had come along, Mixaz's curiosity demanded he be a part of the process if for no other reason than to figure out why _Pioneer_'s design was so odd. Even Mixaz was shocked at just how extensive the discrepancies were. Even so he'd discerned a pattern as he worked patiently away destroying his beloved home in exile. He'd adjusted the demo timetable to get to the root of the matter and discovered the devices that he'd called Gordon up to see. They were so unexpected Gordon had called the Captain in for a look.

Buried in the bulkhead were two large, lozenge-shaped devices of a type he'd never seen before. There was something distinctly unsettling about them even at first glance. To begin with: they both looked filthy. The dark metal of the devices had a dull, oily finish that reminded Koon of cockroaches, excrement, and garbage. Next they had distinctly insectilline architecture. The structural ribbing around the casing was jointed like the legs of a spider and the shape itself resembled a cocoon. Ribbons of sickly green light traced the objects in hexagonal patterns that reminded her of terrestrial honeycombs. Thick chords of conduits wrapped around the bottom and top of each device. Given the slimy appearance of the devices themselves, the jumbled mass of lines resembled anacondas wrapped about each other in a mating ball.

"Its design has the mark of Starfleet," Eddie said idly. "I scanned the materials and came up with where they were refined. The plastic came from New York, and the metals came from Detroit. Much of the more exotic stuff came from Sri Lanka and Malaysia though I can't pin it down much further than that. My guess is it was built on Earth, possibly Trieste Station or McMurdo in Antarctica, and transported to Mars while the ship was being built."

"If they were bombs, they'd have been detonated by now," Koon reasoned.

"So what are they doing here?" Eddie asked.

"It stands to reason we were meant to take these as far away from the Federation as possible," Mixaz said quietly.

Koon shook his head. "Doesn't matter. Until we know what they're for, put them in a class 2 storage container and keep them completely separate from the controls of the ship."

"Expecting these to come back to haunt us, Captain?" Eddie asked. "It'll take half the day to build one of those this size." A class 2 storage container this size would be a headache anyway. Primarily used for biological and hazardous wastes, there were few things as resilient as a class 2 container.

Koon nodded. "Yes I do expect these to haunt us, but until I know why I want them in my pocket instead of floating around for someone else to figure out."

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Dr. Totem fussed about his lab absently while Tylan waited for him to recognize her. It was the good professor's habit to shut out the outside world while he was working through a problem. He'd made it clear in the past few years he expected others to understand this. So when Tylan stepped into the lab she wasn't surprised to see the reptilian alien stooped over an experiment, deep in thought, and hissing thoughtfully to himself.

Tylan stood quietly in the doorway. The fastest way to break through to Totem when he was in such a state was to simply wait until he reached a stopping point. This strategy sometimes backfired. Dr. Spaulding once spent two days camped out in Totem's lab waiting for the slightest recognition, but normally it took a few minutes. This time it took half an hour before Totem raised his head from his work.

"Hello, Lieutenant," he lisped.

"You mentioned an intermediate step to help with the computer core transition, Doctor," Tylan announced. It was better to get right to the point with Totem since he was fiercely conservative with his time.

To the professor's credit he could shift gears with remarkable speed. He nodded half a dozen times to himself before he gave one definitive shake of his head as the proper project came to mind. "Is the core ready for it?" he asked.

Tylan was too tired to beat around the bush. "The new core's nowhere close to completion. We're working on the network, and even that's causing trouble."

Totem broke into a wide smile. "Perfect! We'll be permitted an added experiment at this juncture." He marched across the room and produced a small box from a cabinet. "Install this at any node of the network. I've adapted the power to accept twelve-phase links. Depending on the condition of the node it should take only a few minutes to integrate it."

Tylan took the box and opened it. The object inside confused her. "What is it?" she asked. It looked like a head of cabbage made of metal and dotted with lights.

Already distracted by another project, Totem waved her absently from the room. "It'll help," he said.

Tylan was at a loss. She examined the device carefully. The output jacks were labeled well enough so installing it was self-explanatory. Just what its function was though was not. It had to be some sort of processor due to the nature of the outputs, but if so it was enormous. Puzzling as it was, she had no reason to doubt Totem. The professor was reliable to a fault. He was the one person aboard who never fell short of his duties. If he said he'd done something, it was done above and beyond what was required. With a sigh, she closed the box and made her way to the computer compartment.

She never understood where the human tradition started, but she'd never stepped into a den of computer science without feeling some of society fall dead at the threshold. _Pioneer's_ computer staff were all eccentrics. Some were painfully shy, others were loudly opinionated and at odds with reality; all of them were men. None of them were exceptionally popular with the rest of the crew. They lived in their own little world day after day, and shut all others out.

The ones Koon had recruited from the outset had been some of the most reclusive in Starfleet. They were a team, but everyone from Koon on down had to approach them with care. To a man they were priggish and stiff with outsiders. Even Eddie didn't quite know how to deal with them. They filed reports couched in jargon so obscure nobody could decipher them without a painful migraine. They routinely derided the errors of the rest of the crew when they were asked to fix a problem. Nobody enjoyed dealing with them, but there was no denying they were masters of their art. Of all the things that had gone wrong with _Pioneer_ the computer core had been as solid as granite for seven years. Problems were usually in the operators, not in the hardware or software.

Tylan stepped inside the door and immediately noticed the dimmed lighting. This too was typical of the computer science cult, and she found it irritating. Tired and stressed she saw no reason to pander to these men. "Gentlemen!" she snapped.

A dozen eyes glittered out of the dimness. Half of them stared at her with undisguised lust. Nobody responded to her beyond that even though she outranked all of them.

"I have some hardware for you to install," she announced. She proffered the box.

The eyes shifted in unison to the object. They all gained a childish glint of greed. She could read their expressions as if they were of one mind. They all wanted to play with the new toy. One of them snatched the box from her hands and opened it. The others clannishly huddled around him peering inside. "This is a posatronic brain," one of them announced with evident shock.

"Impossible," another sniffed. "We haven't built one."

"Dr. Totem built this," Tylan explained.

The assembled technicians groaned in unison. In an instant they were babbling jargon to one another like chattering birds. She swore they adopted an accent when they did this. All the consonants grew harsh and flat and all the vowels were muted. It was something between a Chicago accent, and a Texas drawl. _And I trust these guys with a posatronic brain!_ She marveled.

She was about to interject an order to get started when the computer scientists went to work. They plugged in the brain and placed it gingerly on a rickety table. They continued to babble about letters and numbers until a new voice softly interjected over the speakers.

"Hello, how may I be of service?"

The computer scientists went silent in apparent shock.

"Who is this?" Tylan asked.

"I'm not sure yet," the voice replied politely. "What is my function?"

"You are to assist the crew of _USS_ _Pioneer_," Tylan explained. "You are to perform the primary functions of our computer core until we can fabricate a new one."

The voice paused thoughtfully. "It is my understanding I am the core processor of this network."

The computer scientists began babbling in their jargonese making their own more concise explanations to the brain. One by one their attention gradually drifted to the workstations around the room, and they fell silent. Before long they were working frantically.

"I will be the primary control of _USS_ _Pioneer_," the voice announced. "I will perform the upper functions of the computer net of this ship. As such, I am the ship. Therefore you may call me Pi. What can I do for you Lieutenant Tylan?"

Tylan was taken aback. Was this gadget self-aware already? "You can start by introducing yourself to the crew."

The voice modulated slightly. It gained a distinctly feminine quality. "Is there anything else?"

"So far as I'm concerned, anything you can do to advance the timetable for this refit would suit me just fine," Tylan muttered flippantly.

"What is my long term mission?" Pi asked.

"You need to talk to the Captain about that," Tylan said.

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"Pi," Koon said thoughtfully in his quarters a moment later. He rolled the name around trying it on like a new garment. "I like it," he announced with a smile.

"I was instructed to ask you for my mission," Pi explained.

"We are to find and recover the crew of _USS_ _Voyager_. You will apply yourself to that problem at every opportunity, Pi," Koon said patiently.

Pi was quiet for a long time. "May I make a confession, Captain?" she said at length.

Peyter nodded.

"I find this task… unsettling," she admitted.

"Then you'll allow the crew and I to take the lead on this matter," Koon said.

"Thank you, Captain," Pi said. "However, I must admit I should be capable of the mission alone if you desire to return to Earth."

Koon laughed. "Tempting, Pi, but I think you'd be terribly lonely if I did that."

"Thank you, Captain," Pi repeated. She sounded genuinely relieved.

Koon paced around his quarters wondering what Pi could offer him the old computer core couldn't. He found it impossible to believe she rendered the entire crew obsolete, but about all she couldn't do was offer practical experience for such a dangerous mission once the ship was complete.

"May I ask what you are thinking, sir?" Pi asked.

"Just wondering how to best utilize your abilities, Pi," he explained.

"I'm not sure about that either, sir." Pi managed to sound apologetic.

"Then we'll have to discover your thresholds," Koon announced. "Let's begin."

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The next few days saw the refit kick into high gear. The fibercore solved the fabrication problems for the hull and structure. The warp core solved the power output, and Pi solved the computer problem. Eddie was thrilled to watch three decks completed in one day. By the end of the week the ship was taking shape again. Pi was saving everyone hundreds of hours a day not only by doing the hard computations needed to complete the design, but also acting as a sort of apprentice to everyone involved. Unlike a computer which could only do precisely what you told it, Pi had intuition and imagination. Where Eddie used to have to feed in a detailed list of parts into a replicator for a job, Pi could predict what he would need and have it ready for him. If she could manage it, she could even have it delivered to him wherever he was around the ship. She didn't so much take over the refit as much as she harmonized it perfectly. The brain could interact with everyone aboard simultaneously, and thus Tylan's old role as the refit coordinator vanished overnight.

Tylan in the meantime was outfitting her new lab in Engineering. She spent much of her time producing and testing new hardware models for the new power grid. Ironing out the kinks instead of juggling the simple construction was more to her inclinations anyway. While the data for a twelve-phase power grid was available, it had never been tested on this scale before. As always, the gap between theory and practice left much to be desired. It occupied every bit of her time for twenty hours a day.

Eddie in the meantime found himself troubleshooting all over the ship. One of the advantages of refitting the ship to this totality was resolving trouble spots before they were buried in the bulkheads. Among other things, Eddie spent a full day redesigning the water recyclers when it was discovered they had a troublesome habit of turning a portion of the water into vapor. This could have turned _Pioneer_ into a swamp before long, but he was able to remedy the problem in hours instead of the weeks it would have taken to dig all the hardware out of every compartment in the ship.

While the ship grew inside the golden cave, _Pioneer's_ scientists scoured the Cove system with a new urgency. Knowing it was only a matter of time before they all had to load up and leave, they darted about the dangerous belts of explosive gasses collecting data. Half a dozen of the shuttles scattered to the nearby stars to investigate the systems there.

The pace of activity was so energized, the crew somehow managed to forget the danger lurking outside the Cove system.

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**_USS_ _Diocletian_**

"No mistaking it, Captain," Lieutenant Commander Green announced. "That's one of _Pioneer's_ shuttles."

Captain Semmes felt a large weight lift off her shoulders. _Pioneer_ had to be nearby. All that was required was to follow the shuttle back to her prey and her mission would be completed.

For once, Commander King was skeptical. "Any sign of damage? They might be wandering around lost."

Green peered at his instruments carefully. Finally he shook his head. "Possible but unlikely," he declared. "They're doing a standard survey of this system. I might add they're being mighty thorough about it. That doesn't exactly shout out disorientation."

Lieutenant Commander Dar Moth studied the scanner activity carefully. "If I didn't know better, I'd say it was their astronomer Cabrillo doing the survey," he said with a wide smile.

Semmes was about to snap at Dar Moth to keep his opinions to himself, when King interrupted her thoughts. "Tactical, what's that?" He indicated a blip on the fringe of the system. It faded as soon as he pointed it out.

Lieutenant Bo Lien shifted his attention to the sector. "I'm not detecting anything there, Commander… wait!" The blip teased the sensors one more time before vanishing again. "Contact of some sort. They're masking their sensor outline in the heliopause."

"Science?" King demanded.

Green reviewed the sensor logs carefully for a moment before turning back to Semmes. "Possible Hirogen hunter ship, Captain."

Semmes was surprised. "How did we miss that?" she snapped.

King deflected her anger by asking, "What led them out here?"

Green and Bo Lien glanced at each other before turning back to their stations. Green was the first to throw up his hands and admit he didn't know. Bo Lien hesitantly admitted he didn't know either a moment later.

"Tap the Hirogen net and check our perimeter," Semmes ordered. She wasn't anxious to be surprised like Admiral Ward and the _Constantine_. The news of the battle had shocked everyone aboard especially Angela Semmes. Sitting inside the mighty _Diocletian_ for all this time had made her so secure, she felt inviolate. After all she had the firepower, speed, energy, armor, and stealth to handle anything imaginable.

Or so Angela thought.

The stunning information that a swarm of undisciplined Hirogen had crippled one _Caesar_-class dreadnought and destroyed another was a notion she'd met with disbelief initially. As the reports continued to filter in, Angela began to reevaluate her odds in a pitched battle. She could inflict telling carnage on the Hirogen, but their numbers could eventually do considerable harm. If the Hirogen managed to band together against her, Angela Semmes would be in for the fight of her life.

"I suspect they're looking at the shuttle, Captain," Green announced. "The Hirogen net hasn't said a thing about us or _Pioneer_."

"A target of opportunity?" King asked.

"It would fit their pattern," Dar Moth speculated.

"The Net indicates there are about a dozen Hirogen heading in this general direction, Captain," Green reported. He didn't add they were following the _Diocletian's_ approach vector more or less. Since they'd followed _Pioneer's_ trail out here, there was no telling what the Hirogen were looking for until they started chattering on the Net. So far it was quiet today. An unnerving change to be sure, but Green was in no mood to report it for fear of being rebuked.

The tactical image flickered for a fraction of a second, and the Hirogen vanished.

"Where did they go?" Semmes demanded.

Before anyone could reply the shuttle cruising around the system exploded.

Green and Dar Moth frantically scanned their instruments.

"WHAT HAPPENED? WHO DID THAT?" Semmes screamed angrily.

Green slowed down the explosion. _There_! He transferred the data to the main viewer. "What you're seeing, Captain is slowed down to milliseconds."

He went on to explain. The Hirogen ship appeared at high warp outside the heliopause of the system. A few seconds ahead of the ship there was an energy surge denoting a transporter beam. The Hirogen ship whizzed by the shuttle barely an arm's length from a collision; crushing it in its wake. "It would appear they beamed off the crew before they knew they were anywhere nearby," Green concluded.

"That's strange," King said thoughtfully. "Why go to the trouble?"

Semmes smiled. "Gnan," she concluded with relish. "He took our bait after all."

King was quick on the uptake. "We could follow them to Koon," he reasoned.

"I concur. Mr. Green, find that ship. Mr. Dar Moth, plot a trailing course," she ordered. "We'll finish Peyter off if Gnan fails us."


End file.
